Re: Proposed enhancements to MD

From: Scott Long
Date: Tue Jan 13 2004 - 17:54:52 EST


Jure PeÄar wrote:
On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:41:07 -0700
Scott Long <scott_long@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


A problem that we've encountered, though, is the following sequence:

1) md is inialized during boot
2) drives X Y and Z are probed during boot
3) root fs exists on array [X Y Z], but md didn't see them show up,
so it didn't auto-configure the array

I'm not sure how this can be addressed by a userland daemon. Remember
that we are focused on providing RAID during boot; configuring a
secondary array after boot is a much easier problem.


Looking at this chicken-and-egg problem of booting from an array from
administrator's point of view ...

What do you guys think about Intel's EFI? I think it would be the most
apropriate place to put a piece of code that would scan the disks,
assemble
any arrays and present them to the OS as bootable devices ... If we're
going
to get a common metadata layout, that would be even easier.

Thoughts?


The BIOS already scans the disks, assembles the arrays, and presents
finds the boot sector, and presents the arrays to the loader/GRUB. Are
you saying that EFI should be the interface by which the arrays are
communicated through, even after the kernel has booted? Is this
possible right now?

Scott

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