On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Doug Ledford <dledford@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > To be fair, if post-hoc versus initial made any difference what so ever, > then so would the fact that I wouldn't have chosen to have these files > exist at all. I would have made incremental assembly work without a map > file and I would have made imsm superblock handling be in the kernel. > So, I'm dealing with the consequences of decisions I didn't make and > wouldn't have made. I don't think it's then fair to put some sort of > 'premeditated' versus 'dealing with the situation' bias on my response. On the argument about where to place the mdmon files I am now torn between the "Neil" and "Doug" positions, but on the decision of where to place imsm superblock handling I stand behind the design decision to put it in userspace. 1/ If you take a look at native md superblock support you see that the support code is duplicated between kernel-space and user space, having it all handled in userspace means only one code base to maintain (elegant aspect #1). 2/ The kernel can simply worry about the *mechanism* of providing raid while all the assembly *policy* and support for any number of superblock formats is relegated to where policy belongs (elegant aspect #2). 2a/ This simply follows in the path of the design decision to not support in-kernel auto-assembly of version-1 superblocks which started the requirement to use an initramfs to boot software raid. (this is a not so elegant aspect because it mandates an initramfs to boot, but I don't think a general purpose distro can ever get away from that requirement). I will say that needing to touch several software packages (kernel, initramfs, initscripts, mdadm) to get imsm superblock support has added some excitement to the process in the short term. Long term I think the elegant aspects of the decision will prove their worth. -- Dan -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe initramfs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
