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