1 Subject: ANNOUNCE: mdadm 3.2 - A tool for managing Soft RAID under Linux (DEVEL ONLY)
3 I am pleased to announce the availability of
6 It is available at the usual places:
8 http://www.${countrycode}kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
10 git://neil.brown.name/mdadm devel-3.2
11 http://neil.brown.name/git?p=mdadm
13 This is a "Developers only" release. Please don't consider using it
14 or making it available to others without reading the following.
17 By far the most significant change in this release related to the
18 management of reshaping arrays. This code has been substantially
19 re-written so that it can work with 'externally managed metadata' -
20 Intel's IMSM in particular. We now support level migration and
21 OnLine Capacity Expansion on these arrays.
23 However, while the code largely works it has not been tested
24 exhaustively so there are likely to be problems. As the reshape code
25 for native metadata arrays was changed as part of this rewrite these
26 problems could also result in regressions for reshape of native
29 It is partly to encourage greater testing that this release is being
30 made. Any reports of problem - particular reproducible recipes for
31 triggering the problems - will be gratefully received.
33 It is hopped that a "3.2.1" release will be available in early March
34 which will be a bugfix release over this and can be considered
35 suitable for general use.
37 Other changes of note:
40 Various policy statements can be made in the mdadm.conf to guide
41 the behaviour of mdadm, particular with regards to how new devices
42 are treated by "mdadm -I".
43 Depending on the 'action' associated with a device (identified by
44 its 'path') such need devices can be automatically re-added to and
45 existing array that they previously fell out off, or automatically
46 added as a spare if they appear to contain no data.
48 - mdadm now has a limited understanding of partition tables. This
49 allows the policy framework to make decisions about partitioned
52 - --incremental --remove can be told what --path the device was on,
53 and this info will be recorded so that another device appearing at
54 the same physical location can be preferentially added to the same
55 array (provides the spare-same-slot action policy applied to the
58 - A new flags "--invalid-backup" flag is available in --assemble
59 mode. This can be used to re-assemble an array which was stopping
60 in the middle of a reshape, and for which the 'backup file' is no
61 longer available or is corrupted. The array may have some
62 corruption in it at the point where reshape was up to, but at least
63 the rest of the array will become available.
66 - Various internal restructuring - more is needed.
69 Any feed back and bug reports are always welcomed at:
70 linux-raid@vger.kernel.org
72 And please: don't use this in production - particularly not the
75 NeilBrown 1st February 2011