Contributed by johan on from the you-did-backup-right? dept.
Damien Miller (djm@) writes to source-changes@ about the impending on-disk metadata format change for softraid(4).
It is very important that softraid users read this and take due action to backup their data before upgrading their machines.
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008, Hans-Joerg Hoexer wrote: > CVSROOT: /cvs > Module name: src > Changes by: hshoexer@cvs.openbsd.org 2008/06/13 18:16:38 > > Modified files: > share/man/man4 : softraid.4 > sbin/bioctl : bioctl.8 > sys/dev : softraid.c > > Log message: > Update bioctl(8) and softraid(4) to recent changes and enable softraid > crypto. It's still considered experimental! Just to reinforce the "experimental" thing: There are some big softraid changes coming that will alter the on-disk metadata format (for all softraid disciplines, not just crypto). Volumes created with the current tools will be unreadable afterwards. In the meantime, we appreciate test reports but please don't complain about incompatibility after "cvs up". We will announce when the format has stabilised. -d
(Comments are closed)
By Craig Metz (70.109.50.2) cmetz@inner.net on
It would be very helpful if you did not require someone with a softraid on 4.3 to do a back-up/restore in order to have that be usable on 4.4. While we're talking -current and you've given fair warning, it's okay to make changes for which there might never be a better upgrade path than a rebuild, but for the full releases, proving some reasonable path would be a good engineering practice.
(Aside: a certain "enterprise" RAID adapter vendor, I'll call them "Vendor A," once had a critical-bug-fix BIOS upgrade to their 16 port SATA adapters, in order to make them not crash [quite as often] under load. This upgrade changed the on-disk metadata format with no upgrade path, that is, you must blow away and rebuild your arrays. Oh, we rebuilt them all right. On our new Areca cards.)
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (203.20.79.132) on
>
> It would be very helpful if you did not require someone with a softraid on 4.3 to do a back-up/restore in order to have that be usable on 4.4. While we're talking -current and you've given fair warning, it's okay to make changes for which there might never be a better upgrade path than a rebuild, but for the full releases, proving some reasonable path would be a good engineering practice.
If you were provided with a tool to migrate between the metadata formats, would you just trust your data to it? Even using such a tool, I would be backing my data up before hand.
Secondly the rate of change in -current is expected to be high at the moment. Would you expect the project to develop such migration tools before the design changes have settled? Would you expect those tools to be updated each time a change is made during these "experimental" times?
They're not quite at 4.4 yet so it's a bit early to be talking about "good engineering practice" as if it is currently lacking.
If you want to play with experimental RAID code and be realistic, then you should back up your data and be willing to suffer some down time.
By Damien Miller (djm) on http://www.mindrot.org/~djm/
> with the current on-disk format, auto-upgrade on first mount with the
> new code, or a tool to migrate from the old format to the new format?
Unless anyone steps forward to write a tool (it is possible, but not completely trivial), the only upgrade path will be backup+restore.
Comments
By Damien Miller (djm) on http://www.mindrot.org/~djm/
By Anonymous Coward (2a01:198:25d:0:2c0:9fff:fe1a:6a01) on
> compatibility with the current on-disk format, auto-upgrade on first
> mount with the new code, or a tool to migrate from the old format to
> the new format?
> It would be very helpful if you did not require someone with a
> softraid on 4.3 to do a back-up/restore in order to have that be
> usable on 4.4.
Well, you could've used RAIDframe (man 4 raid). That hasn't changed
in a while and looks pretty stable... from a heavy user's POV.
Comments
By henning (96.52.0.247) on
> > compatibility with the current on-disk format, auto-upgrade on first
> > mount with the new code, or a tool to migrate from the old format to
> > the new format?
>
> > It would be very helpful if you did not require someone with a
> > softraid on 4.3 to do a back-up/restore in order to have that be
> > usable on 4.4.
>
> Well, you could've used RAIDframe (man 4 raid). That hasn't changed
> in a while and looks pretty stable... from a heavy user's POV.
and will go away once softraid is considered feature-complete and stable.
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (64.164.127.28) on
> > > compatibility with the current on-disk format, auto-upgrade on first
> > > mount with the new code, or a tool to migrate from the old format to
> > > the new format?
> >
> > > It would be very helpful if you did not require someone with a
> > > softraid on 4.3 to do a back-up/restore in order to have that be
> > > usable on 4.4.
> >
> > Well, you could've used RAIDframe (man 4 raid). That hasn't changed
> > in a while and looks pretty stable... from a heavy user's POV.
>
> and will go away once softraid is considered feature-complete and stable.
And well it should as the current mess of vnd encryption over the top of raid frame is cumbersome to say the least!!
looking quite forward to my last backup and restore of 220gb of encrypted db from raidframe to a new feature complete and stable softraid with crypto(once the developers get done with same).
some of us DO loosely follow current and backup and restore somewhat large databases, disk to disk its NOT so bad. But watch out for those damn flagdays!! :(
anon
Comments
By Anonymous Coward (76.250.126.209) on
>
> some of us DO loosely follow current and backup and restore somewhat large databases, disk to disk its NOT so bad. But watch out for those damn flagdays!! :(
I'll hook you guys up with some backup magic once softraid is in better shape. I have been working on some ideas; I might even do a talk on it.
/marco