ANNOUNCE-2.6.8

Subject:  ANNOUNCE: mdadm 2.6.8 - A tool for managing Soft RAID under Linux

I am pleased to announce the availability of
   mdadm version 2.6.8

It is available at the usual places:
   countrycode=xx.
   http://www.${countrycode}kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
and via git at
   git://neil.brown.name/mdadm
   http://neil.brown.name/git?p=mdadm

mdadm is a tool for creating, managing and monitoring
device arrays using the "md" driver in Linux, also
known as Software RAID arrays.

Release 2.6.8 contains various bug fixes and minor enhancements.
It is possibly that 2.6.8 will be the last release in the 2.x
series and very likely that there will never be a 2.7.
Hopefully 3.0 will be released soon making future development
of 2.6.x unnecessary.  However if a need does arise for a 2.6.9
it will be considered.

Changelog Entries:
    fix add_dev() handling of broken links
    Assemble: allow --force to work even when event counts are 0.
    mapfile:  fix bug in testing for /var/run/mdadm/
    Incremental:  change precedence order for autof setting.
    Adjust major number testing to allow for extended minor number in 2.6.28
    Incremental:  allow assembly of foreign array.
    Incremental:  fix setting of 'autof' flag.
    Fix --incremental assembly of partitions arrays.
    Fix NULL pointer oops
    Fix bad metadata formatting
    Allow WRITEMOSTLY to be cleared on --readd using --readwrite.
    Remove .UR .UE macros from man page because the don't do what we want.
    Grow: Fix linear-growth when devices are not all the same size.
    Improve reporting of layout for raid10.
    Manage: allow adding device that is just large enough to v1.x array.
    Cosmetic cleanup of some messages.
    Clean up usage of open()
    Add support for distribution specific build extensions
    Fix confusing usage in md.4 man page.
    Describe the HOMEHOST entry in the mdadm.conf man page.
    Some more cleanup of tests.
    Add test for stoping and restarting a raid5 reshape.
    Add "bitmap=" to "--detail --brief" output when relevant.
    Improve error message when mdadm fails to stop an array.
    Couple more man page fixes
    Add text to man pages suggesting partition type to use for version 1.x metadata.
    Italic/bold fixes in man pages.
    Fix bug in forced assemble.
    Fix an error when assembling arrays that are in the middle of a reshape.

Development of mdadm is sponsored by
 SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.

NeilBrown  28th November 2008