Release 2.5mdadm-2.5

Signed-off-by: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>

1 files changed, 67 insertions, 0 deletions

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+Subject:  ANNOUNCE: mdadm 2.5 - A tool for managing Soft RAID under Linux
+
+I am pleased to announce the availability of
+   mdadm version 2.5
+
+It is available at the usual places:
+   http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/source/mdadm/
+and
+   http://www.{countrycode}.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
+
+mdadm is a tool for creating, managing and monitoring
+device arrays using the "md" driver in Linux, also
+known as Software RAID arrays.
+
+Release 2.5 adds a host of minor updates and one major update.
+
+The major update involves an "Auto Assemble" function which will,
+with certainly limits, scan all available devices for anything that
+looks like an md array, and will try to assemble it.
+This code should be treated with some caution as it is very new,
+and could be revised in future, though hopefully not very much.
+
+The main problem I have always had will auto-assembly is that it
+is too easy for it to assemble thing that you don't want assembled,
+e.g. if you have moved some devices from a different computer.
+To remove this problem, arrays can now be tagged for the computer
+that is their home (homehost) and only arrays with the correct
+homehost will be auto-assembled.
+
+Feedback on the effectiveness and usefulness of this feature and it's
+documentation is encouraged.
+
+Changelog Entries:
+    -   Support 'mailfrom' line in mdadm.conf so the From: line in alert
+	emails can be explicitly set.
+    -   Arrange that SparesMissing (which is similar in import to
+	DegradedArray) generates an Email.
+    -   Assume "DEVICE partitions" if no DEVICE line is given.
+    -   Support new 'offset' layout for raid10.
+    -   When creating a bitmap file, choose a chunksize to limit number
+	of bitmap chunks to 2 million.  More than this can cause kmalloc
+	failure.
+    -   New 'CREATE' line in mdadm.conf for defaults such as owner, group,
+	mode and auto-flag
+    -   --detail checks if array has been started or not and includes that
+	in report.
+    -   When using --update=uuid on an array with a bitmap, update the
+	bitmap's uuid too.
+    -   Add a copy of /proc/mdstat to the mail message sent by mdadm
+        --monitor.
+    -   New flag --no-degraded to avoid starting arrays if there are
+	fewer devices available than last time the array was started.
+	This is only needed with --scan, as with --scan, that behaviour
+	is the default.
+    -   Support for 'homehost' concept.  This is a fairly major update.
+	It includes a configfile option and a command line option for
+	specifying a homehost, records that host in the superblock,
+	and reports the homehost where possible.
+    -   Support for Auto Assembly.  "mdadm -As" will, if provided with
+	the name of a homehost, try to assemble all arrays it can find
+	that were created for that homehost.  See man pages for more details.
+
+Development of mdadm is sponsored by
+ SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
+
+NeilBrown  26th May 2006
+