Feature changed by: Karl Cheng (qantas94heavy) Feature #316537, revision 6 Title: Drive DDF fake RAID with MD / mdadm + openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + Priority + Requester: Desirable Requested by: Martin Wilck (mwilck) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Use Linux-MD / mdadm (rather than device-mapper / dmraid) to set up RAID arrays with DDF meta data found during installation. In openSUSE <= 12.3, only IMSM fake RAID is set up with MD / mdadm, all other "fake RAID" formats are set up with dmraid. mdadm 3.3 includes a many improvements and stability fixes for DDF. This feature is easy to implement. Under https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:mwilck:mdadm-DDF:openSUSE, I am providing small modification of libstorage that makes this possible when put on a DUD. https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/DDF_Fake_RAID#OpenSUSE contains instructions. The DUD contains only updated mdadm packages (mdadm-3.3 plus a few patches that Neil Brown already ack'ed) and the modified libstorage4.so in inst-sys. Test Case: Installation of openSUSE on a RAID system with DDF RAID. This could be real HW with "DDF fake RAID", or simply a VM with previously configured DDF RAID. The system should detect the DDF RAID, offer it for installation and boot loader installation, and be able to install successfully on it. After installation, the system should run cleanly from the MD RAID array. The system shouldn't hang on reboot/shutdown. Use Case: This is useful for owners of systems with "Fake RAID" or "BIOS RAID" solutions using DDF meta data. One important vendor of these RAID solutions is LSI. LSI offers a closed-source driver (megasr) for these controllers but I think that Linux users will be better served with MD in the long run. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: MD/mdadm is the more complete and feature-rich RAID implementation than dmraid, thus meta data formats that mdadm supports should be driven by mdadm, not dmraid. With the release of 3.3, mdadm's DDF support is now at least on par with dmraid, adding mdadm's general benefits makes it the better choice for SW RAID driver for "fake RAID" systems using DDF. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/316537