Re: Is shrinking raid5 possible?

[Henrik Holst <henrik.holst@idgmail.se>]

Neil Brown wrote:
> In short, reducing a raid5 to a particular size isn't something that
> really makes sense to me.  Reducing the amount of each device that is
> used does - though I would much more expect people to want to increase
> that size.

Think about the poor people! :-) Those who can't afford to buy a new
disk after a failure but can give up some free space. I actually don't
think that that scenario is /highly unlikely/ to occur?

And also for the sake of symmetry: If growing is allowed- why should not
shrinking be just as valid?

Neil Brown wrote:
> If Paul really has a reason to reduce the array to a particular size
> then fine.  I'm mildly curious, but it's his business and I'm happy
> for mdadm to support it, though indirectly.  But I strongly suspect
> that most people who want to resize their array will be thinking in
> terms of the amount of each device that is used, so that is how mdadm
> works.

I agree with you here- keep the parameters "low level". In that way the
administrator (users use a GUI) have more control over the operation at
hand. (kmdadm anyone? :-))

--
Henrik Holst