On 10/27/09 11:09, Per Jessen wrote:

Sinisa wrote:

...

Hello everyone,

is this the right place to suggest two little features for Yast2 partitioner:

1. an option to clone partition layout from one disk to other: I often make little servers with 4, 6 or even 10 disks and Linux RAID, so I need to repeat all the steps for all of the disks (of course, I do not use the a whole disk for one md partition, but at least for two, plus swap) and that consumes a lot of time and is error-prone... Until it is implemented, just swap out into a shell, and copy the mbr from disk to disk with dd.

/Per

Actually, better way would be "sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk /dev/sdb", it calls ioctl to re-read partition tables when done, but there is a little problem: there is no option (in 11.1) to commit changes to disk during patitioning, so I first run "fdisk" on first disk, then "sfdisk ..." for all the others, and then "Rescan disks" from partitioner. And I am always looking for a way to make it easier for "average Joe" :) Siniša -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 10/27/09 11:42, Per Jessen wrote:

Sinisa wrote:

...

On 10/27/09 11:09, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Sinisa wrote:

...

Hello everyone,

is this the right place to suggest two little features for Yast2 partitioner:

1. an option to clone partition layout from one disk to other: I often make little servers with 4, 6 or even 10 disks and Linux RAID, so I need to repeat all the steps for all of the disks (of course, I do not use the a whole disk for one md partition, but at least for two, plus swap) and that consumes a lot of time and is error-prone...

Until it is implemented, just swap out into a shell, and copy the mbr from disk to disk with dd.

/Per

Actually, better way would be "sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk /dev/sdb", it calls ioctl to re-read partition tables when done, but there is a little problem: there is no option (in 11.1) to commit changes to disk during patitioning, so I first run "fdisk" on first disk, then "sfdisk ..." for all the others, and then "Rescan disks" from partitioner.

And I am always looking for a way to make it easier for "average Joe" :) Hi Siniša

you're right, sfdisk would be better. One comment - installing on a system with that many disks is not really something "average Joe" does a lot :-)

/Per

Agree, but with current disk prices, it will become more and more common to have at least raid1 (or raid 10 on two disks, something that seems to be specific to Linux, but has significant speed increase on reads over raid1) BTW, what about my second question, about beeing able to specify layout for radi10? Siniša -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 10/27/09 12:54, Per Jessen wrote:

Sinisa wrote:

...

Agree, but with current disk prices, it will become more and more common to have at least raid1 (or raid 10 on two disks, something that seems to be specific to Linux, but has significant speed increase on reads over raid1) Yep, except for plain back-office PCs, I always have RAID1.

...

BTW, what about my second question, about beeing able to specify layout for radi10? It wasn't quite clear to me what you meant - I think it's possible to setup a RAID10 today, isn't it?

From "man mdadm": ---------------------------------- 8< ------------------------------------------ -p, --layout= This option configures the fine details of data layout for raid5, and raid10 arrays, and controls the failure modes for faulty. .... skipped raid5, nobody uses it anyway .... Finally, the layout options for RAID10 are one of 'n', 'o' or 'f' followed by a small number. The default is 'n2'. n signals 'near' copies. Multiple copies of one data block are at similar offsets in different devices. o signals 'offset' copies. Rather than the chunks being duplicated within a stripe, whole stripes are duplicated but are rotated by one device so duplicate blocks are on different devices. Thus subsequent copies of a block are in the next drive, and are one chunk further down. f signals 'far' copies (multiple copies have very different offsets). See md(4) for more detail about 'near' and 'far'. The number is the number of copies of each datablock. 2 is normal, 3 can be useful. This number can be at most equal to the number of devices in the array. It does not need to divide evenly into that number (e.g. it is perfectly legal to have an 'n2' layout for an array with an odd number of devices). ---------------------------------- 8< ------------------------------------------ Layout "far" gives best performance (almost twice read speed of layout "near" or raid1, writes beeing the same, even for 2 disks), and has no disadvantages (that I know of), so it could just be made default. Siniša PS. Here is a small test I did today with 4 Seagate 1.5TB SATA drives. I know that there is much more to performance than raw reading speed reported by hdparm, but this is enough to make one think: 1. Created 4 50GB partitions on each drive (so that all of them have almost same speed because they are at the begining of the drive and small enough to resync fast) 2. Created 6 md arrays: 2 disk raid10 with layout near sa:~ # mdadm -C -n 2 -c 512 -l 10 -p n2 /dev/md0 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 2 disk raid10 with layout far sa:~ # mdadm -C -n 2 -c 512 -l 10 -p f2 /dev/md1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1 2 disk raid1 sa:~ # mdadm -C -n 2 -c 512 -l 1 /dev/md2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 2 disk raid0 sa:~ # mdadm -C -n 2 -c 512 -l 0 /dev/md3 /dev/sde2 /dev/sdf2 3 disk raid10 with layout far (and a hot spare) sa:~ # mdadm -C -n 3 -c 512 -l 10 -p f2 -x 1 /dev/md4 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd3 /dev/sde3 /dev/sdf3 4 disk raid10 with layout far sa:~ # mdadm -C -n 4 -c 512 -l 10 -p f2 /dev/md5 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4 /dev/sde4 /dev/sdf4 2a. Result looks like this: sa:~ # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid10] [raid1] [raid0] md5 : active raid10 sdf4[3] sde4[2] sdd4[1] sdc4[0] 104871936 blocks 512K chunks 2 far-copies [4/4] [UUUU] md4 : active raid10 sdf3[3](S) sde3[2] sdd3[1] sdc3[0] 78653952 blocks 512K chunks 2 far-copies [3/3] [UUU] md3 : active raid0 sdf2[1] sde2[0] 104871936 blocks 512k chunks md2 : active raid1 sdd2[1] sdc2[0] 52436096 blocks [2/2] [UU] md1 : active raid10 sdf1[1] sde1[0] 52435968 blocks 512K chunks 2 far-copies [2/2] [UU] md0 : active raid10 sdd1[1] sdc1[0] 52435968 blocks 2 near-copies [2/2] [UU] 3. done some timing tests: sa:~ # hdparm -tT /dev/md0 /dev/md1 /dev/md2 /dev/md3 /dev/md4 /dev/md5 /dev/md0: Timing cached reads: 2284 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1141.54 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 374 MB in 3.00 seconds = 124.52 MB/sec # 2 disk raid10 with layout near /dev/md1: Timing cached reads: 2316 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1157.40 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 714 MB in 3.00 seconds = 237.76 MB/sec # 2 disk raid10 with layout far, 2x faster than md0 /dev/md2: Timing cached reads: 2282 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1141.15 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 386 MB in 3.00 seconds = 128.46 MB/sec # 2 disk raid1, same speed as raid10 / near /dev/md3: Timing cached reads: 2234 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1116.92 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 726 MB in 3.01 seconds = 241.58 MB/sec # 2 disk raid0, not really RAID, just for speed comparison /dev/md4: Timing cached reads: 2296 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1148.16 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1014 MB in 3.00 seconds = 337.72 MB/sec # 3 disk raid10 with layout far /dev/md5: Timing cached reads: 2296 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1147.79 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1308 MB in 3.00 seconds = 435.95 MB/sec # 4 disk raid10 with layout far Read speed increases lineary with addition of drives, of course limited by bus speed, but I have tested earlier with 10 disks, and all of them were able to deliver 100+MB/s simultaneously (1 GB/s aggregate transfer). Later today I will test read and write with something like this: read: dd if=/dev/mdX of=/dev/null bs=8192 count=some large number to eliminate effects of caching (6GB RAM) write: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mdX bs=8192 count=same large number -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

I use Raid5 myself unless I choose to use Raid10 Jack Malone Network Administrator Horizon Industries Office: 903-590-4305 Cell: 903-283-2629 -----Original Message----- From: Philipp Thomas [mailto:pth@suse.de] Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 11:46 AM To: opensuse@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse] Yast2 partitioner new features * Sinisa (sinisa@4net.rs) [20091027 15:54]:

.... skipped raid5, nobody uses it anyway ....

I wouldn't count myself as nobody :) Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Philipp Thomas pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

* Sinisa (sinisa@4net.rs) [20091027 15:54]:

...

.... skipped raid5, nobody uses it anyway ....

I wouldn't count myself as nobody :)

Philipp

I use raid5 on my hardware raid controller so that makes me _not_ nobody either. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 28 October 2009 06:29:20 sinisa wrote:

Please include my wishes in Fate, until I (try to) become one of volunteer members...

You should be fast in decision as there is few free spaces left :-) BTW, there is feature request with your sign: https://features.opensuse.org/308257 Some tags would help to find feature. I added 'raid' and 'partitioner' as tags, some more specific may help too. -- Regards, Rajko OpenSUSE Wiki Team: http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team People of openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/People_of_openSUSE/About -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org