This is shrinking an array by removing drives. We were talking about shrinking an array by reducing the size of drives - a very different think.
Yes I know - I just wanted to get this in as an alternative shrinking semantic. As for reducing the RAID (partition) size on the individual drives I can only see two reasons: 1) One wants to replace / add a disk but the new disk is slightly smaller than the existing ones. Actual capacity varies a lot for the same nominal capacity, especially across brands. 2) One wants to do something else with some of the space, although for a RAID5 I don't quite see the point - you'd end up with n small partitions. Shrinking a 2-way mirror or stripe this way sounds far more useful. Having RAID tightly integrated with volume management and partitions would be nice, but that's a pipe dream. (EVMS just integrates the UI somewhat, you still have to mess about with layers.)
I'm not sure it is really worth the effort I'm afraid.
Neither am I ... it just would have come in handy a few times, that's all. Thanks, C. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
