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1 | Subject: ANNOUNCE: mdadm 1.8.1 - A tool for managing Soft RAID under Linux - DEVELOPMENT version |
2 | ||
3 | ||
4 | I am pleased to announce the availability of | |
5 | mdadm version 1.8.1 | |
6 | It is available at | |
7 | http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/source/mdadm/ | |
8 | and | |
9 | http://www.{countrycode}.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/ | |
10 | ||
11 | as a source tar-ball and (at the first site) as an SRPM, and as an RPM for i386. | |
12 | ||
13 | This is a "development" release of mdadm. It should *not* be | |
14 | considered stable and should be used primarily for testing. | |
15 | The current "stable" version is 1.8.0. | |
16 | ||
17 | Release 1.8.1 supports different styles of superblocks (aka RAID metadata). | |
18 | Two formats are currently supported | |
19 | version 0.90.0 - the traditional Linux RAID superblock | |
20 | version 1 - a new superblock which less useless information and some more | |
21 | flexability. | |
22 | ||
23 | Version 1 supports more than 28 devices in an array, and RAID1 and greater over | |
24 | devices larger than 2TB (though a 2TB RAID1 would take forever to resync!). | |
25 | ||
26 | mdadm 1.8.1 takes a different approach to creating arrays than | |
27 | previous versions, though this is largely transparent. Instead of | |
28 | giving the devices to the kernel and letting it "create" the array and | |
29 | write out initial superblocks, mdadm 1.8.1 writes out the initial | |
30 | superblocks itself, thus creating the array, and then asks the kernel | |
31 | to assemble that array. | |
32 | ||
33 | Version 1 superblocks requires 2.6.10 or a recent 2.6.10-rc snapshot. | |
34 | ||
35 | Enhancements that are expected before this becomes 2.0.0: | |
36 | ||
37 | - mdassemble currently doesn't compile | |
38 | - version 1 superblocks have room for a label, which currently isn't used. | |
39 | Setting the label, and assembling arrays by label will be supported. | |
40 | A label like "$HOSTNAME-root" could be the standard label for the device | |
41 | containing the root filesystem for $HOSTNAME. | |
42 | ||
43 | ||
44 | Development of mdadm is sponsored by CSE@UNSW: | |
45 | The School of Computer Science and Engineering | |
46 | at | |
47 | The University of New South Wales | |
48 | ||
49 | NeilBrown 05 November 2004 | |
50 |