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1 | Subject: ANNOUNCE: mdadm 2.6 - A tool for managing Soft RAID under Linux |
2 | ||
3 | I am pleased to announce the availability of | |
4 | mdadm version 2.6 | |
5 | ||
6 | It is available at the usual places: | |
7 | http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/source/mdadm/ | |
8 | and | |
9 | countrycode=xx. | |
10 | http://www.${countrycode}kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/ | |
11 | and via git at | |
12 | git://neil.brown.name/mdadm | |
13 | http://neil.brown.name/git?p=mdadm | |
14 | ||
15 | mdadm is a tool for creating, managing and monitoring | |
16 | device arrays using the "md" driver in Linux, also | |
17 | known as Software RAID arrays. | |
18 | ||
19 | Release 2.6 adds assorted fixes and improvements and a new major mode. | |
20 | "Incremental Assembly" via -I or --incremental can be used to | |
21 | assemble an array one device at a time. The idea is that you get | |
22 | udev to run "mdadm -Iq devicename" on each new block device that it | |
23 | finds. Anything that is part of an array gets included in an array as | |
24 | appropriate. | |
25 | Two special notes: | |
26 | 1/ This is very new code and is probably buggy. It passes a few basic | |
27 | tests, and helped me find some kernel bugs, but it is still fresh | |
28 | and should not be considered 'stable'. Please test and provide | |
29 | feedback. | |
30 | 2/ There is a bug in the linux kernel that makes incremental assembly | |
31 | not possible in general (you cannot safely remove a drive from an array | |
32 | that has not yet been started. This is needed if an old device was | |
33 | detected first). If mdadm detects a kernel which might have the | |
34 | bug, it rejects --incremental requests. | |
35 | The bug will hopefully be fixed in 2.6.20 and this mdadm release | |
36 | contains patches for 2.6.18, 2.6.18.6 and 2.6.19. Apply the | |
37 | appropriate patch to test --incremental. | |
38 | ||
39 | Changelog Entries: | |
40 | - Fixed UUID printing in "--detail --brief" for version1 metadata. | |
41 | - --update=resync did exactly the wrong thing for version1 metadata. | |
42 | It caused a resync to not happen, rather than to happen. | |
43 | - Allow --assemble --force to mark a raid6 clean when it has two | |
44 | missing devices (which is needed else if won't assemble. | |
45 | Without this fix it would only assemble if one or zero | |
46 | missing devices. | |
47 | - Support --update=devicesize for cases where the underlying device | |
48 | can change size. | |
49 | - Default to --auto=yes so the array devices with 'standard' names | |
50 | get created automatically, as this is almost always what is wanted. | |
51 | - Give useful message if raid4/5/6 cannot be started because it is | |
52 | not clean and is also degraded. | |
53 | - Increase raid456 stripe cache size if needed to --grow the array. | |
54 | The setting used unfortunately requires intimate knowledge of the | |
55 | kernel, and it not reset when the reshape finishes. | |
56 | - Change 'Device Size' to 'Used Dev Size' because it only shows how | |
57 | much of each device is actually used, not how big they are. | |
58 | - --wait or -W will wait for resync activity to finish on the given | |
59 | devices. | |
60 | - Fix some problems with --update=uuid and add a test. | |
61 | - If two drives in a raid5 disappear at the same time, then "-Af" | |
62 | will add them both in rather than just one and forcing the array | |
63 | to 'clean'. This is slightly safer in some cases. | |
64 | - Check device is large enough before hot-add: this improves quality | |
65 | of error message. | |
66 | - Don't hold md device open for so long in --monitor mode - map_dev | |
67 | can be slow and interferes with trying to stop the array. | |
68 | - Support --uuid= with --create to choose your own UUID. | |
69 | - New major more "--incremental" for incremental assemble of arrays, | |
70 | intended for use with udev. | |
71 | ||
72 | Development of mdadm is sponsored by | |
73 | SUSE Labs, Novell Inc. | |
74 | ||
75 | NeilBrown 21st December 2006 | |
76 | Blessed Christmas to all. |