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Date:      Tue, 19 Mar 2002 09:28:34 +1030
From:      Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        "Giles, George S" <george.giles@vanderbilt.edu>
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: Vinum Raid 5 Problem
Message-ID:  <20020319092834.X93909@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <235204156.1016436324@george>
References:  <20020318112024.B70252@wantadilla.lemis.com> <235204156.1016436324@george>

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[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html]

Quoted text completely mangled.

On Monday, 18 March 2002 at  7:25:24 -0600, Giles, George S wrote:
> --On Monday, March 18, 2002 11:20 AM +1030 Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>> [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html]
>>
>> Computer output wrapped.
>>
>> On Sunday, 17 March 2002 at  8:37:31 -0600, Giles, George S wrote:
>>>
>>> My system has three identical disks. The following config does
>>> not work:
>>>
>>> 1 volumes:
>>> V myRaidFive            State: down     Plexes:       1 Size:
>>> 8192 MB
>>
>> Care to have a guess what "down" means?
>>
>>> 1 plexes:
>>> P myRaidFive.p0      R5 State: init     Subdisks:     3 Size:
>>> 8192 MB
>>
>> "init" may not be so obvious.  That's why it's described in the
>> man page:
>>
>>
>>     init [-S] size [-w] plex | subdisk
>>
>>             vinum init initializes a subdisk by writing zeroes
>> to it.  You              can initialize all subdisks in a plex by
>> specifying the plex              name.  This is the only way to
>> ensure consistent data in a plex.              You must perform
>> this initialization before using a RAID-5 plex.              It
>> is also recommended for other new plexes.  vinum initializes
>> all subdisks of a plex in parallel.  Since this operation can
>> take a long time, it is normally performed in the background.  If
>>             you want to wait for completion of the command, use
>> the -w (wait)              option.
>>
>>             Specify the -S option if you want to write blocks of
>> a different              size from the default value of 16 kB.
>> vinum prints a console              message when the
>> initialization is complete.
>
> The problem turned out to be the specification of the disk sizes in
> gigabytes with a g when megabytes were used it all worked as
> expected.

No, that is incorrect.  It's as I stated: you need to initialize
RAID-5 plexes before you can use them.  If you have somehow found out
how to use a RAID-5 plex without initializing it (there are some back
doors which I won't describe), you'll have complete and utter data
corruption if you lose a spindle.

Greg
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