| Tools that manage md devices can be found at |
| http://www.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/.... |
| |
| |
| Boot time assembly of RAID arrays |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| You can boot with your md device with the following kernel command |
| lines: |
| |
| for old raid arrays without persistent superblocks: |
| md=<md device no.>,<raid level>,<chunk size factor>,<fault level>,dev0,dev1,...,devn |
| |
| for raid arrays with persistent superblocks |
| md=<md device no.>,dev0,dev1,...,devn |
| or, to assemble a partitionable array: |
| md=d<md device no.>,dev0,dev1,...,devn |
| |
| md device no. = the number of the md device ... |
| 0 means md0, |
| 1 md1, |
| 2 md2, |
| 3 md3, |
| 4 md4 |
| |
| raid level = -1 linear mode |
| 0 striped mode |
| other modes are only supported with persistent super blocks |
| |
| chunk size factor = (raid-0 and raid-1 only) |
| Set the chunk size as 4k << n. |
| |
| fault level = totally ignored |
| |
| dev0-devn: e.g. /dev/hda1,/dev/hdc1,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1 |
| |
| A possible loadlin line (Harald Hoyer <HarryH@Royal.Net>) looks like this: |
| |
| e:\loadlin\loadlin e:\zimage root=/dev/md0 md=0,0,4,0,/dev/hdb2,/dev/hdc3 ro |
| |
| |
| Boot time autodetection of RAID arrays |
| -------------------------------------- |
| |
| When md is compiled into the kernel (not as module), partitions of |
| type 0xfd are scanned and automatically assembled into RAID arrays. |
| This autodetection may be suppressed with the kernel parameter |
| "raid=noautodetect". As of kernel 2.6.9, only drives with a type 0 |
| superblock can be autodetected and run at boot time. |
| |
| The kernel parameter "raid=partitionable" (or "raid=part") means |
| that all auto-detected arrays are assembled as partitionable. |
| |
| Boot time assembly of degraded/dirty arrays |
| ------------------------------------------- |
| |
| If a raid5 or raid6 array is both dirty and degraded, it could have |
| undetectable data corruption. This is because the fact that it is |
| 'dirty' means that the parity cannot be trusted, and the fact that it |
| is degraded means that some datablocks are missing and cannot reliably |
| be reconstructed (due to no parity). |
| |
| For this reason, md will normally refuse to start such an array. This |
| requires the sysadmin to take action to explicitly start the array |
| desipite possible corruption. This is normally done with |
| mdadm --assemble --force .... |
| |
| This option is not really available if the array has the root |
| filesystem on it. In order to support this booting from such an |
| array, md supports a module parameter "start_dirty_degraded" which, |
| when set to 1, bypassed the checks and will allows dirty degraded |
| arrays to be started. |
| |
| So, to boot with a root filesystem of a dirty degraded raid[56], use |
| |
| md-mod.start_dirty_degraded=1 |
| |
| |
| Superblock formats |
| ------------------ |
| |
| The md driver can support a variety of different superblock formats. |
| Currently, it supports superblock formats "0.90.0" and the "md-1" format |
| introduced in the 2.5 development series. |
| |
| The kernel will autodetect which format superblock is being used. |
| |
| Superblock format '0' is treated differently to others for legacy |
| reasons - it is the original superblock format. |
| |
| |
| General Rules - apply for all superblock formats |
| ------------------------------------------------ |
| |
| An array is 'created' by writing appropriate superblocks to all |
| devices. |
| |
| It is 'assembled' by associating each of these devices with an |
| particular md virtual device. Once it is completely assembled, it can |
| be accessed. |
| |
| An array should be created by a user-space tool. This will write |
| superblocks to all devices. It will usually mark the array as |
| 'unclean', or with some devices missing so that the kernel md driver |
| can create appropriate redundancy (copying in raid1, parity |
| calculation in raid4/5). |
| |
| When an array is assembled, it is first initialized with the |
| SET_ARRAY_INFO ioctl. This contains, in particular, a major and minor |
| version number. The major version number selects which superblock |
| format is to be used. The minor number might be used to tune handling |
| of the format, such as suggesting where on each device to look for the |
| superblock. |
| |
| Then each device is added using the ADD_NEW_DISK ioctl. This |
| provides, in particular, a major and minor number identifying the |
| device to add. |
| |
| The array is started with the RUN_ARRAY ioctl. |
| |
| Once started, new devices can be added. They should have an |
| appropriate superblock written to them, and then passed be in with |
| ADD_NEW_DISK. |
| |
| Devices that have failed or are not yet active can be detached from an |
| array using HOT_REMOVE_DISK. |
| |
| |
| Specific Rules that apply to format-0 super block arrays, and |
| arrays with no superblock (non-persistent). |
| ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| An array can be 'created' by describing the array (level, chunksize |
| etc) in a SET_ARRAY_INFO ioctl. This must has major_version==0 and |
| raid_disks != 0. |
| |
| Then uninitialized devices can be added with ADD_NEW_DISK. The |
| structure passed to ADD_NEW_DISK must specify the state of the device |
| and it's role in the array. |
| |
| Once started with RUN_ARRAY, uninitialized spares can be added with |
| HOT_ADD_DISK. |
| |
| |
| |
| MD devices in sysfs |
| ------------------- |
| md devices appear in sysfs (/sys) as regular block devices, |
| e.g. |
| /sys/block/md0 |
| |
| Each 'md' device will contain a subdirectory called 'md' which |
| contains further md-specific information about the device. |
| |
| All md devices contain: |
| level |
| a text file indicating the 'raid level'. This may be a standard |
| numerical level prefixed by "RAID-" - e.g. "RAID-5", or some |
| other name such as "linear" or "multipath". |
| If no raid level has been set yet (array is still being |
| assembled), this file will be empty. |
| |
| raid_disks |
| a text file with a simple number indicating the number of devices |
| in a fully functional array. If this is not yet known, the file |
| will be empty. If an array is being resized (not currently |
| possible) this will contain the larger of the old and new sizes. |
| |
| chunk_size |
| This is the size if bytes for 'chunks' and is only relevant to |
| raid levels that involve striping (1,4,5,6,10). The address space |
| of the array is conceptually divided into chunks and consecutive |
| chunks are striped onto neighbouring devices. |
| The size should be atleast PAGE_SIZE (4k) and should be a power |
| of 2. This can only be set while assembling an array |
| |
| component_size |
| For arrays with data redundancy (i.e. not raid0, linear, faulty, |
| multipath), all components must be the same size - or at least |
| there must a size that they all provide space for. This is a key |
| part or the geometry of the array. It is measured in sectors |
| and can be read from here. Writing to this value may resize |
| the array if the personality supports it (raid1, raid5, raid6), |
| and if the component drives are large enough. |
| |
| metadata_version |
| This indicates the format that is being used to record metadata |
| about the array. It can be 0.90 (traditional format), 1.0, 1.1, |
| 1.2 (newer format in varying locations) or "none" indicating that |
| the kernel isn't managing metadata at all. |
| |
| As component devices are added to an md array, they appear in the 'md' |
| directory as new directories named |
| dev-XXX |
| where XXX is a name that the kernel knows for the device, e.g. hdb1. |
| Each directory contains: |
| |
| block |
| a symlink to the block device in /sys/block, e.g. |
| /sys/block/md0/md/dev-hdb1/block -> ../../../../block/hdb/hdb1 |
| |
| super |
| A file containing an image of the superblock read from, or |
| written to, that device. |
| |
| state |
| A file recording the current state of the device in the array |
| which can be a comma separated list of |
| faulty - device has been kicked from active use due to |
| a detected fault |
| in_sync - device is a fully in-sync member of the array |
| spare - device is working, but not a full member. |
| This includes spares that are in the process |
| of being recoverred to |
| This list make grow in future. |
| |
| |
| An active md device will also contain and entry for each active device |
| in the array. These are named |
| |
| rdNN |
| |
| where 'NN' is the possition in the array, starting from 0. |
| So for a 3 drive array there will be rd0, rd1, rd2. |
| These are symbolic links to the appropriate 'dev-XXX' entry. |
| Thus, for example, |
| cat /sys/block/md*/md/rd*/state |
| will show 'in_sync' on every line. |
| |
| |
| |
| Active md devices for levels that support data redundancy (1,4,5,6) |
| also have |
| |
| sync_action |
| a text file that can be used to monitor and control the rebuild |
| process. It contains one word which can be one of: |
| resync - redundancy is being recalculated after unclean |
| shutdown or creation |
| recover - a hot spare is being built to replace a |
| failed/missing device |
| idle - nothing is happening |
| check - A full check of redundancy was requested and is |
| happening. This reads all block and checks |
| them. A repair may also happen for some raid |
| levels. |
| repair - A full check and repair is happening. This is |
| similar to 'resync', but was requested by the |
| user, and the write-intent bitmap is NOT used to |
| optimise the process. |
| |
| This file is writable, and each of the strings that could be |
| read are meaningful for writing. |
| |
| 'idle' will stop an active resync/recovery etc. There is no |
| guarantee that another resync/recovery may not be automatically |
| started again, though some event will be needed to trigger |
| this. |
| 'resync' or 'recovery' can be used to restart the |
| corresponding operation if it was stopped with 'idle'. |
| 'check' and 'repair' will start the appropriate process |
| providing the current state is 'idle'. |
| |
| mismatch_count |
| When performing 'check' and 'repair', and possibly when |
| performing 'resync', md will count the number of errors that are |
| found. The count in 'mismatch_cnt' is the number of sectors |
| that were re-written, or (for 'check') would have been |
| re-written. As most raid levels work in units of pages rather |
| than sectors, this my be larger than the number of actual errors |
| by a factor of the number of sectors in a page. |
| |
| Each active md device may also have attributes specific to the |
| personality module that manages it. |
| These are specific to the implementation of the module and could |
| change substantially if the implementation changes. |
| |
| These currently include |
| |
| stripe_cache_size (currently raid5 only) |
| number of entries in the stripe cache. This is writable, but |
| there are upper and lower limits (32768, 16). Default is 128. |
| strip_cache_active (currently raid5 only) |
| number of active entries in the stripe cache |