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Date:      Tue, 2 Jun 1998 20:16:27 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Vinum alpha 0.03 available
Message-ID:  <19980602201627.P22406@freebie.lemis.com>

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2 June 1998

The third alpha version of vinum is now available for download at
ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/vinum/vinum-0.02.tar.gz.

ABOUT VINUM
===========

   Vinum  is  a  logical volume manager modeled after the Veri-
   tas(R) volume manager.  It is not a clone of Veritas, howev-
   er, and attempts to solve a number of problems more elegant-
   ly than Veritas.  It also offers features that Veritas  does
   not have.

   This  guide explains how to install and configure Vinum on a
   FreeBSD system.  See also the technical notes  and  the  man
   pages Vinum(4) and Vinum(8).

   Concepts
   ________

   As  used  in  this  document, a volume manager is a software
   component which isolates file systems  from  the  underlying
   disk  hardware.   Instead  of  building file systems on disk
   partitions, they are built on volumes.  This has a number of
   advantages:

   o Volumes may span disk drives.

   o Volumes may be larger than any drive.

   o By  spreading  the  disk load over multiple volumes, it is
     possible to improve performance.

   o By dynamically increasing the size of a volume, it is pos-
     sible to solve space problems without repartitioning.

   o By  replicating  data within the volume, it is possible to
     improve availability.

   o By changing the volume configuration on-line, it is possi-
     ble to reorganize disk storage on-line.


CHANGES IN VERSION 0.03
=======================

- Add a second verbose flag to vinum(8).  -v is moderately verbose, -V
  is very verbose.
- Rewrite state change code.  This should fix any problems experienced
  in previous versions.
- Get RAID 5 code working (not included in this version).

FIXES IN VERSION 0.02
=====================

- Fix the source format to conform with style(9)
- Improve some configuration file checking.  This version is not quite
  as likely to cause the system to spontaneously reboot.
- resetconfig no longer causes the system to drop into the debugger
  on the next create command
- I have included a .gdbinit file for testing, if you want to do
  this.  I haven't documented how to do it yet.  Contact me or wait a
  day or two if you want to use this feature.

CAVEATS IN THE CURRENT VERSION
==============================

A couple of things to observe:

- The configuration is not really up to scratch.  I know this, but I
  plan to leave many fixes until I have attained the more basic goal
  of stable operation.

- The partitions used for vinum *must* be of type "unused".  This
  helps avoid shooting yourself in the foot by building a vinum on top
  of a file system partition.  If you try, you will get the message
  "Drive has invalid partition type".

PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS
======================

Vinum is available under a Berkeley-style copyright.  It is
implemented as a loadable kernel module (LKM).

This version of vinum contains a subset of the final functionality,
roughly equivalent to the ccd driver.  In particular, the following
restrictions apply:

   Automatic startup is not yet complete.  It is currently necessary
   to re-configure the volumes every time the subsystem is started.
   This operation does not change the data on the disks.

   Detection of differences between the version of the kernel and the
   LKM is not yet implemented.

   Detaching plexes and subdisks has not yet been implemented.

   Reintegration of failed disks has not yet been implemented.

   vinum requires a special version of newfs, which has not yet been
   committed.  The current version places some restrictions on volume
   names.  See the documentation for further information.

This version of vinum will run (hopefully) on FreeBSD 2.2.6 and recent
versions of 3.0-CURRENT.  It may also run on 2.2.5, but I haven't
tested it.  Due to changes in -CURRENT, it will not compile on
versions older than about mid-March 1998.

Due to licensing restrictions, this version does not contain the RAID5
functionality.  If you are interested in testing this, please contact
me privately.

Don't use this version for performance testing.  I have a lot of debug
code in there, some of which is quite slow.  At the moment, my main
concern is stability.

Documentation for this version includes man pages (vinum(4) and
vinum(8)) and a user's guide, currently (for convenience) in
/usr/src/sbin/vinum/doc.  You can build PostScript versions of any of
these by building the appropriate file (vinum4.ps, vinum8.ps or
userguide.ps) in this directory.  For convenience' sake, the
distribution includes the PostScript file
/usr/src/sbin/vinum/doc/userguide.ps.  This document is intended to be
formatted with troff; you can format it with nroff, but it will look
funny.  I don't intend to fix this.

The documentations Makefile also refers to a file notes.*, which will
contain technical notes when it is finished.  All documents refer to
the RAID5 functionality.  Please ignore them for the time being.

If you use this version, *PLEASE* give me some feedback, even if
things work fine.  In particular, of course, I'd like to hear of any
problems you have either with the software or the documentation.  I'll
also accept requests for enhancement, but don't expect to see them in
the near future: there's still a lot of code to be written.

Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>

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