Re: Picking up development of dmraid

Heinz Mauelshagen <[email protected]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:26:49 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.linux.ataraid
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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On 07/18/2012 11:08 AM, Danny Wood wrote:
> Hi Mark-Willem Jansen
>
> You may want to speak with Phillip Susi of the Ubuntu Dmraid team.
> He built a set of patches a long while ago that I don't think got 
> included in the stable dmraid.
> He knows the ins and outs of dmraid and has spends a lot of time bug 
> fixing during Ubuntu release cycles.
>
> I think the main reason that this project has died is because it is a 
> very niche market.

Seconded WRT the niche market.

> It's usually only used by the people who run a dual boot with Windows 
> as Mdadm is far superior for pure Linux installs.

The later is exactly why things move to MD and eg. we're doing a 
device-mapper target wrapper
to access the MD kernel runtime in order to make it accessible in LVM.

Because the MD runtime has the long established field record it has, 
major FAKERAID OEMs decided
to use it (namly Intel with their Intel Matrix RAID, isw in dmraid).
mdadm gained external metadata format support along the lines of dmraid 
to allow for that and
thus supports isw for long time now.

As a result of that, Red Hat decided to not further develop dmraid. 
Actually we already asked publically,
if dmraid is still mandatory to support the other metadata formats than 
DDF, Intel Matrix RAID and MD,
which are supported by mdadm now anyway.

No arguments it's still needed resulted from that so far.

>
> Also GPT can already be used on top of dmraid, as far as I know you 
> use dmraid to initialise the block devs and kpartx to deal with 
> partitions.

There's no need to have code duplication for partitioinig support in 
another tool.
For the record: the DOS partitioning support got added way back in time 
before kpartx addressed it
(and never got pulled out).

So use kpartx for activating partitionins on RAID sets.


The most important question (as mentioned above) still persists though: 
is dmraid still needed or
is any further development adequate  to support the Adaptec, Highpoint, 
Jmicron, LSI, NVidia, Promise,
Silicon Image and VIA metadata formats? Are they still being used that 
much in the field or are users
just happy with dmraid access to those in their mixed Linux/Windows 
environments?
Requirement for pure Linux environment is MD/LVM anyway.

We better get field feedback which we didn't get so far to answer that 
question.

Heinz

>
> Good luck and best regards,
> Danny
>
>
> On 18/07/12 09:20, Mark-Willem Jansen wrote:
>> Dear dmraid developers,
>>
>> Sometime in this mail-list it was said that the program dmraid was in 
>> maintaining mode and not further developed anymore. In the meantime 
>> the dm-developement team has put out new dm-target, which can be used 
>> by the tool.
>>
>> I would like to fork the latest RC and put on github, to continue 
>> developing the tool. I will give it a slightly new name, so people 
>> will not confuse it with the original. My plan is to add the support 
>> for new dm-targets and also implement more partition tables, starting 
>> with GPT.
>>
>> I am not really good at generating new names, but here are some ideas.
>>
>> dmraid-fbmw (forked by Mark-Willem)
>> dmraid-fu (follow-up)
>> dmraid-ext (extended version)
>>
>> So my question which name you think is a good one for the forked?
>>
>> And who can I connect if I have some questions about the tool.
>>
>> Greetings,
>>
>> Mark-Willem Jansen
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ataraid-list mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ataraid-list mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list


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    On 07/18/2012 11:08 AM, Danny Wood wrote:<br>
    <blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]" type="cite">
      <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
        http-equiv="Content-Type">
      Hi Mark-Willem Jansen<br>
      <br>
      You may want to speak with Phillip Susi of the Ubuntu Dmraid team.<br>
      He built a set of patches a long while ago that I don't think got
      included in the stable dmraid.<br>
      He knows the ins and outs of dmraid and has spends a lot of time
      bug fixing during Ubuntu release cycles.<br>
      <br>
      I think the main reason that this project has died is because it
      is a very niche market.<br>
    </blockquote>
    <br>
    Seconded WRT the niche market.<br>
    <br>
    <blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]" type="cite"> It's
      usually only used by the people who run a dual boot with Windows
      as Mdadm is far superior for pure Linux installs.<br>
    </blockquote>
    <br>
    The later is exactly why things move to MD and eg. we're doing a
    device-mapper target wrapper<br>
    to access the MD kernel runtime in order to make it accessible in
    LVM.<br>
    <br>
    Because the MD runtime has the long established field record it has,
    major FAKERAID OEMs decided<br>
    to use it (namly Intel with their Intel Matrix RAID, isw in dmraid).<br>
    mdadm gained external metadata format support along the lines of
    dmraid to allow for that and<br>
    thus supports isw for long time now.<br>
    <br>
    As a result of that, Red Hat decided to not further develop dmraid.
    Actually we already asked publically,<br>
    if dmraid is still mandatory to support the other metadata formats
    than DDF, Intel Matrix RAID and MD,<br>
    which are supported by mdadm now anyway.<br>
    <br>
    No arguments it's still needed resulted from that so far.<br>
    <br>
    <blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]" type="cite"> <br>
      Also GPT can already be used on top of dmraid, as far as I know
      you use dmraid to initialise the block devs and kpartx to deal
      with partitions.<br>
    </blockquote>
    <br>
    There's no need to have code duplication for partitioinig support in
    another tool.<br>
    For the record: the DOS partitioning support got added way back in
    time before kpartx addressed it<br>
    (and never got pulled out).<br>
    <br>
    So use kpartx for activating partitionins on RAID sets.<br>
    <br>
    <br>
    The most important question (as mentioned above) still persists
    though: is dmraid still needed or<br>
    is any further development adequate&nbsp; to support the Adaptec,
    Highpoint, Jmicron, LSI, NVidia, Promise,<br>
    Silicon Image and VIA metadata formats? Are they still being used
    that much in the field or are users<br>
    just happy with dmraid access to those in their mixed Linux/Windows
    environments?<br>
    Requirement for pure Linux environment is MD/LVM anyway.<br>
    <br>
    We better get field feedback which we didn't get so far to answer
    that question.<br>
    <br>
    Heinz<br>
    <br>
    <blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]" type="cite"> <br>
      Good luck and best regards,<br>
      Danny<br>
      <br>
      <br>
      <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 18/07/12 09:20, Mark-Willem Jansen
        wrote:<br>
      </div>
      <blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]"
        type="cite">
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        <div dir="ltr"> Dear dmraid developers,<br>
          <br>
          Sometime in this mail-list it was said that the program dmraid
          was in maintaining mode and not further developed anymore. In
          the meantime the dm-developement team has put out new
          dm-target, which can be used by the tool.<br>
          <br>
          I would like to fork the latest RC and put on github, to
          continue developing the tool. I will give it a slightly new
          name, so people will not confuse it with the original. My plan
          is to add the support for new dm-targets and also implement
          more partition tables, starting with GPT.<br>
          <br>
          I am not really good at generating new names, but here are
          some ideas.<br>
          <br>
          dmraid-fbmw (forked by Mark-Willem)<br>
          dmraid-fu (follow-up)<br>
          dmraid-ext (extended version)<br>
          <br>
          So my question which name you think is a good one for the
          forked?<br>
          <br>
          And who can I connect if I have some questions about the tool.<br>
          <br>
          Greetings,<br>
          <br>
          Mark-Willem Jansen<br>
          <br>
        </div>
        <br>
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