On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 10:36:11AM -0400, William Thompson wrote:
> Is this possible (w/o using lvm)
Not currently, and as far as I remember, there is no good reason behind
it (except that no-one's done it ;)
--
................................................................
: [email protected] : And I see the elder races, :
:.........................: putrid forms of man :
: Jakob ?stergaard : See him rise and claim the earth, :
: OZ9ABN : his downfall is at hand. :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:
On Wednesday June 19, [email protected] wrote:
> Is this possible (w/o using lvm)
Yes, but you need a patch...
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/patches/linux-stable/
2.4.19-pre8 section
patch-Z-MdLocks
Improve locking of MD related structure, particularly when reconfiguring
patch-a-RaidSplit
Split raid requests that span chunks
patch-b-MdPart
Enable partitioning of MD devices
patch-c-MdpMajor
Define a static major number for mdp - partitioned md
These patches should make the first 16 devices partitionable.
Without patch-c-MdpMajor, a free major number is allocated (usually
254, but no guarantees) and you have to either:
- have a script which finds the number from /proc/devices and makes
all the /dev entries, or
- use devfs
With patch-c-MdpMajor, Major number "60" (LOCAL/EXPERIMENTAL USE) is
allocated for the partitioned md devices.
I use this in production. I have two system discs (sda and sdb, or
hda and hdc) which are mirrored together as whole devices, and then
this is partitioned:
mda1 == root
mda2 == swap
mda3 == other...
Getting lilo to cope was interesting, but it works.
NeilBrown
On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 12:51:40PM +1000, Neil Brown wrote:
> On Wednesday June 19, [email protected] wrote:
> > Is this possible (w/o using lvm)
>
> Yes, but you need a patch...
...
Any plans for getting this into the kernel Neil ?
I get quite a few questions from people who either do not understand
that you cannot partition md devices (and do various rather
involuntarily interesting setups because of that), or people who
understand the limitation but not the reason behind it.
Thinking about it, I don't know the reason ;)
It's really a functionality that a lot of people feel naturally is
there, and I can't blame them.
--
................................................................
: [email protected] : And I see the elder races, :
:.........................: putrid forms of man :
: Jakob ?stergaard : See him rise and claim the earth, :
: OZ9ABN : his downfall is at hand. :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:
On Friday June 21, [email protected] wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 12:51:40PM +1000, Neil Brown wrote:
> > On Wednesday June 19, [email protected] wrote:
> > > Is this possible (w/o using lvm)
> >
> > Yes, but you need a patch...
> ...
>
> Any plans for getting this into the kernel Neil ?
I've been hanging out for 2.4.19 to be released. Then I hope to
submit some of the changes that recently went into 2.5 (which sort out
the locking) and then the partitioning.
I suspect the functionality will end up in 2.5 one day, but I'm not
sure how and I'm not going to push it until (unless) the block_dev
layer settles down.
NeilBrown