Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 10 Oct 2004 01:44:23 +0200 | From | Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <> | Subject | Re: [Announce] "iswraid" (ICH5R/ICH6R ataraid sub-driver) for 2.4.28-pre3 |
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On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 16:03:00 -0700 (PDT), Martins Krikis <mkrikis@yahoo.com> wrote: > --- Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <bzolnier@elka.pw.edu.pl> wrote: > > > I may sound like an ignorant but... > > > > Why can't device mapper be merged into 2.4 instead? > > "Instead" is the key word here... That would mean that > Boji's and my work has been largely in vain and that the > driver that to my best knowledge currently provides the > simplest (from a user's point of view) cooperation with > Intel RAID OROM and the most comlete feature-set regarding > Intel RAID metadata interpretation and updates would not > make it to the kernel. I have nothing against device mapper > being merged into 2.4 but I don't consider that a fair > reason for not considering iswraid.
Well, in some way this speaks against merging iswraid in 2.4. If it provides "the most comlete feature-set regarding Intel RAID metadata interpretation and updates" then merging it would create regression when compared to 2.6, wouldn't it?
> > Is there something wrong with 2.4 device mapper patch? > > I don't think so. However, I do believe that iswraid has > some advantages, one of them being the ability to just link > it statically with the rest of the kernel and not needing > any user-space support code, i.e., initrd is not necessary.
Yep, no doubt it is easier to use but harder to maintain.
> Also, I do not believe that dm+dmraid are currently > capable of updating the Intel RAID metadata in case of > errors. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
again "regression" argument is valid here
> > It would more convenient (same driver for 2.4 and 2.6) > > and would benefit users of other software RAIDs > > (easier transition to 2.6). > > If you expect the transitioning from ataraid to dm+dmraid > to be so hard that it is best to do it separately from > the switch to a 2.6 kernel, then I think 2 things are true:
Maybe not hard but inconvinient.
> 1) there might be something positive about the simple > usage of ataraid subdrivers,
Yep.
> 2) the users of Intel RAID metadata might benefit by > having two drivers supporting them in 2.4 kernels---the > one with the "simple, ataraid-style" usage and "the one > for the future".
Yep.
> My email archive and the feedback on iswraid's project > page actually contains many requests for an iswraid port > to 2.6. Which I'm reading as a sign that some users > actually like it.
iswraid and 2.6 is a no go for obvious reason (no ataraid)
> The main features of iswraid are listed in > Documentation/iswraid.txt, almost at the top of the file. > I believe that several of them distingiush it from > other ataraid subdrivers in a positive way, and there > was certainly a lot of hard work that went into this driver.
No doubt about that.
I'm fine with merging iswaid into 2.4 but it is a bit shame that the same amount of work didn't go into improving Intel RAID support in 2.6.
> I don't know how dm+dmraid would compare, but if you do, > I'll be most interested to learn about it. > > > > Martins Krikis > Storage Components Division > Intel Massachusetts - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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