On 8/26/07, Justin Piszcz <jpiszcz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, Abe Skolnik wrote: > > > Dear Mr./Dr./Prof. Brown et al, > > > > I recently had the unpleasant experience of creating an MD array for > > the purpose of booting off it and then not being able to do so. Since > > I had already made changes to the array's contents relative to that > > which I cloned it from, I did not want to reformat the array and > > re-clone it just to bring it down to the old 0.90 metadata format so > > that I would be able to boot off it, so I searched for a solution, and > > I found it. > > > > First I tried the patch (written by Neil Brown) which can be seen at... > > <http://www.issociate.de/board/post/277868/> > > > > That patch did not work as-is, but with some more hacking, I got it > > working. I then cleaned up my work and added relevant comments. > > > > I know that Mr./Dr./Prof. Brown is against in-kernel boot-time MD > > assembly and prefers init[rd/ramfs], but I prefer in-kernel assembly, > > and I think several other people do too. Since this patch does not > > (AFAIK) disable the init[rd/ramfs] way of bringing up MDs in boot-time, > > I hope that this patch will be accepted and submitted up-stream for > > future inclusion in the mainline kernel.org kernel distribution. > > This way kernel users can choose their MD assembly strategy at will > > without having to restrict themselves to the old metadata format. > > > > I hope that this message finds all those who read it doing well and > > feeling fine. > > > > Sincerely, > > > > Abe Skolnik > > > > P.S. Mr./Dr./Prof. Brown, in case you read this: thanks! > > And if you want your name removed from the code, just say so. > > > > > but I prefer in-kernel assembly, > > and I think several other people do too. > I concur with this statement, why go through the hassle of init[rd/ramfs] > if we can just have it done in the kernel? > Because you can rely on the configuration file to be certain about which disks to pull in and which to ignore. Without the config file the auto-detect routine may not always do the right thing because it will need to make assumptions. So I turn the question around, why go through the exercise of trying to improve an auto-detect routine which can never be perfect when the explicit configuration can be specified by a config file? I believe the real issue is the need to improve the distributions' initramfs build-scripts and relieve the hassle of handling MD details. > Justin. Regards, Dan - 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
