2006-03-23 09:47:22

by Yogesh Pahilwan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: raw I/O support for Fedora Core 4

Hi All,

I want to do raw I/O on MD RAID and LVM for fedora core 4(kernel 2.6.15.6).

After doing googling I came to know that "raw" command does the raw
operation by linking
MD device and LVM volume to the raw device as

# raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/md0.

But when I search on this I came to know that there is no raw (/dev/rawctl)
device support available with 2.6 kernel.
I have also tried recompile the kernel sources with raw device support it is
not getting compiled as it is obsolete in 2.6.
If I want to include raw device support in my kernel what should I will have
to do, so that I
Will be able to do raw I/O on MD device and LVM volumes.

Thanks and Regards,
Yogesh


2006-03-23 10:07:19

by Arjan van de Ven

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: raw I/O support for Fedora Core 4

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 14:54 +0530, Yogesh Pahilwan wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I want to do raw I/O on MD RAID and LVM for fedora core 4(kernel 2.6.15.6).
>
> After doing googling I came to know that "raw" command does the raw
> operation by linking
> MD device and LVM volume to the raw device as
>
> # raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/md0.
>
> But when I search on this I came to know that there is no raw (/dev/rawctl)
> device support available with 2.6 kernel.
> I have also tried recompile the kernel sources with raw device support it is
> not getting compiled as it is obsolete in 2.6.
> If I want to include raw device support in my kernel what should I will have
> to do, so that I

the preferred interface is doing O_DIRECT io on the device node itself,
rather than going via a (slower) indirection layer such as "raw". ("raw"
is just a wrapper on top of O_DIRECT basically in 2.6 kernels so slower)

2006-03-23 15:47:34

by Phillip Susi

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: raw I/O support for Fedora Core 4

The raw device driver is obsolete because it has been superseded by the
O_DIRECT open flag. If you want to have dd perform unbuffered IO then
pass the iflag=direct option for input, or oflag=direct option for
output, and it will use O_DIRECT to bypass the buffer cache.

This of course assumes that you mean "bypass the buffer cache" when you
say "raw io".

Yogesh Pahilwan wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I want to do raw I/O on MD RAID and LVM for fedora core 4(kernel 2.6.15.6).
>
> After doing googling I came to know that "raw" command does the raw
> operation by linking
> MD device and LVM volume to the raw device as
>
> # raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/md0.
>
> But when I search on this I came to know that there is no raw (/dev/rawctl)
> device support available with 2.6 kernel.
> I have also tried recompile the kernel sources with raw device support it is
> not getting compiled as it is obsolete in 2.6.
> If I want to include raw device support in my kernel what should I will have
> to do, so that I
> Will be able to do raw I/O on MD device and LVM volumes.
>
> Thanks and Regards,
> Yogesh
>