raidreconf feedback help

raidreconf feedback help

[Rikard Morssing]

I just decided to risk it and expand my raid5-set with raidreconf. It
failed miserably (but that might be due to hw).

But it made me think. How should we create meaningful, extensive and
informative debug reports which is crucial for the developers to debug
the program? What i think should be on the raidreconf webpage is a list
of steps to perform BEFORE and AFTER running the raidreconf, and where
to send the report.

good idea?

regards
Rikard M

Re: raidreconf feedback help (CFM!)

[Jakob Oestergaard]

On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 01:12:22PM +0100, Rikard Morssing wrote:
> I just decided to risk it and expand my raid5-set with raidreconf. It
> failed miserably (but that might be due to hw).

Ok  :)

You're not the first to report a failure - and especially on flaky
hardware there are things that raidreconf could do to recover
gracefully, that it doesn't.

> 
> But it made me think. How should we create meaningful, extensive and
> informative debug reports which is crucial for the developers to debug
> the program? What i think should be on the raidreconf webpage is a list
> of steps to perform BEFORE and AFTER running the raidreconf, and where
> to send the report.

"developers" currently means "noone", unfortunately.  But I'm probably
the closest thing to what you expected it would mean  :)

I know of a few bugs that can be fixed fairly easily, which would
resolve most of the bug reports I have seen.  And I am willing to do
those fixes.  But I have been too busy (for the past year!) to get these
things done.

It really hurts to see a potentially useful tool rot away like this.

The tool did change hands once, to Daniel Cox, who fixed some important
bugs that I did not have the time to fix back then. He too, was hit by
the "too busy" syndrome, and I got the code back (with his fixes of
course), but hasn't touched it much since then.

RedHat then took the tool, and did some changes. As far as I know, the
only thing they changed was indentation and perhaps some configuration.
But I haven't looked more closely, and RedHat never at any point
notified me about them using the tool, or even cared to ask if I knew of
any specific bugs in the tool  (go figure...)

I tried convincing the EVMS people (who included the kernel RAID
functionality in their code as well), to take the raidreconf code and
make it do hot-reconfiguration (as part of EVMS).  They too, however,
seems to be hit by the "too busy" syndrome.   (it seems to be
contagious - beware!)

> 
> good idea?

Yes, very good.

Even better; you or anyone else out there listening;  if you feel that
you have a few weekends to burn, take raidreconf and fix those few bugs
that make this tool eat half the arrays that its used on.

It really should be no more than a few weekends.

I'm sure that there are people on this list who would be more than happy
to help with testing.   And I would of course be delighted to explain
the basic architecture of the tool, talk about the few known problems,
and come with whatever suggestions I might be able to come up with.

If no-one does this - I will fix it myself.  I may do so in three weeks
from now.  Or I may do so in three years from now.  I cannot say.

I guess there is little doubt, that *if* the tool really worked
reliably, it would be useful.

But beware. Anyone who's been in contact with the code so far, have been
hit by the "too busy" syndrome.  I take no responsibility (to the extent
of applicable law) over any implications contact with the raidreconf
code might have on your daily schedule...   ;)

-- 
................................................................
:   jakob@unthought.net   : And I see the elder races,         :
:.........................: putrid forms of man                :
:   Jakob Østergaard      : See him rise and claim the earth,  :
:        OZ9ABN           : his downfall is at hand.           :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:
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