On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 03:23:52PM +1000, Neil Brown wrote: > How does LVM manage metadata??? I assume it stored the metadata on > the device. Which is what mdadm does. It stores a backup of the metadata under /etc after every changes it makes. It is like if "mdadm --create" have automatically added the array to /etc/mdadm.conf etc. > But as devices can move between machines..... With LVM, moving a volume group means running vgchange/vgexport/pvscan/vgimport/vgchange, so it's not like "it just works". So if there are any name conflicts, you must explicitely run vgrename before the new VG can be activated. > > How about introducing /dev/md/by-uuid/... (or similar) and teaching > > people that if they want to transparently carry their arrays from one > > host to another, then they should always refer to it by UUID? > > This already exists, though it might be distro-dependant. > /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-xxxxx But that requrires the MD device to already be present therefore does not help solving the name clash issue. What I propose is that "mdadm --assemble" should accept "UUID=..." instead of the MD device name. Then mdadm could ignore the name/homehost, and create the device node with a name (/dev/md/by-uuid/...) that will never clash with arrays using traditional names. Gabor -- --------------------------------------------------------- MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute Hungarian Academy of Sciences --------------------------------------------------------- -- 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