Re: Vinum status

On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 17:20, Craig Boston wrote:

> FWIW, root-on-gvinum seems to be working on my test server here.
> Swapping over it also passes basic stress testing (dd from zero to null
> with very large block sizes).

I've been using root-on-gvinum on my system for the past couple of days
(I switched over entirely once I discovered the "missing plexes during
boot" was no longer an issue).  I've found it to be reliable---even in
the face of one or two lockups (which were nvidia.ko, not gvinum,
related).  I've been stressing it, too (which is fairly easy on my
Pentium II-300 setup:).

The only time I've had a problem is when I last built a kernel (today,
actually) and forgot to build geom_vinum.ko manually.  Needless to say,
the next boot failed to find my root partition due to the missing kernel
module.  Luckily, rebooting using /boot/kernel.old allowed me to build
and install geom_vinum.ko and boot my new kernel successfully.

> The system does seem to be quite a bit slower than before, but that may
> be related to having PREEMPTION disabled (this is an SMP system).  I'll
> see how it responds once that whole situation is resolved.

I mentioned on freebsd-current that round-robin reads don't seem to be
supported by geom_vinum, yet.  (Lukas confirmed this is yet to be
done.)  In my system, all reads are from one drive of my mirror, unlike
with the old vinum.  Perhaps this is partially the cause of the relative
slowness you're seeing?

It'd be great to see GEOM vinum go into 5.3, and hence be adopted for
5-STABLE.  Great work, Lukas!

Cheers,

Paul.
-- 
e-mail: paul_at_gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa