Re: state of drbd in mainline

Philipp Reisner
2022-03-29T15:44:20Z

Jens, my intention is to keep it in-tree, and at some point update it.
Regarding your questions:

[...]

> - Why aren't the drbd maintainers responding to posted patches? They seem
> to simply be ignored, and I'm left to pickup the trivial ones that look
> fine to me. In-kernel drbd appears largely unmaintained, and has been for
> years.

The team here has grown, we are busy. Since you started to pick up the
trivial patches yourself, I thought it is not necessary that I collect them and
send a pull request in merge-window time.

> - Even if out-of-band communication is used for in-kernel users of drbd,
> that doesn't result in any patches or fixes that should go upstream?

This one:
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-block/patch/20210426163032.3454129-1-christoph.boehmwalder@linbit.com/
(relevant to users that have DRBD on top of md raid)

> - If there's zero activity for in-kernel drbd, all users are using the
> out-of-tree version?

There are users of the in-tree version, some with huge fleets.
Some do not need the newer out-of-tree DRBD, and the in-tree version is a
lot easier to compile. You need coccinelle for the out-of-tree version,
and that can already be a hindering barrier for some.

> As far as I can tell, drbd upstream is stone cold dead, and has been for
> years. Why shouldn't it just get removed?

Because there are users.

> Is it just bait to get people to use an out-of-tree version?

No.

> --
> Jens Axboe