From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: Linux RAID metadata format docs? Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:28:47 -0500 Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20031114202846.GA18577@gtf.org> References: <20031114185013.GA11930@gtf.org> <20031114193114.GB1080@mea-ext.zmailer.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20031114193114.GB1080@mea-ext.zmailer.org> To: Matti Aarnio Cc: neilb@cse.unsw.edu.au, linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 09:31:14PM +0200, Matti Aarnio wrote: > On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 01:50:13PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: > > Do any docs exist, that describe the on-disk md format? > > Not as such. An H-file isn't a document in itself... > > > I'm talking with a vendor that would like to support booting off of > > "Linux RAID" (as they call it), from their card's BIOS, which implies > > the vendor would need to add support for the md format to their BIOS. > > > > Jeff > > Problem there is the multitude of partition schemes, and that RAID > superblocks are inside the partitions... Yep. Thought I consider it fairly pointless to support anything but ms-dos partitions and EFI partitions. Given limited development resources, I don't see a huge need for (for example) BSD disklabel support. > Nevertheless I would love to be able to boot from _any_ of disks > in a bootable RAID1 diskset. I have just experimented with Highpoint's > RocketRaid 1520, which almost can do that. It fails if the primary > disk is offline, but succeeds if secondary is out. > I also liked their superblock location - very early in disk. > Negative thing in the HPT BIOS is, that if it detects a fault, it > wants user input instead of just trying starting disks a bit more > persistently, and continuing _soon_ the boot in degraded RAID1 mode > without any user input. Yeah, the main point is to be able to root in degraded mode, as well as regular mode. Jeff