ANNOUNCE-1.8.1

   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