Subject: Re: Raidframe (was: Adaptec AAA-131SA?)
To: Johan Danielsson <joda@pdc.kth.se>
From: Greg Oster <oster@cs.usask.ca>
List: current-users
Date: 04/13/1999 11:32:26
Johan Danielsson writes:
> Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi> writes:
> 
> > (Yes, I know 1.4 supports RAID, but I haven't tried it out yet and
> > this someone thinks there may be bugs in the new RAID implementation
> > of NetBSD).

And "this someone" *knows* there are bugs in it. :-)  In fact, I have a 
list of the ones I know about :-)  None of the ones I know about are
really serious enough to require immediate attention though, and will be 
fixed for 1.5.  (You have to be doing some pretty arcane stuff to trigger 
some of them.)  There are probably more that I don't know about, but that's
true for just about any large piece of software :-/

> Btw, how stable is raidframe? Especially regarding data integrity, but
> also general stability.

I've not experienced any data corruption for quite some time -- since well
before RAIDframe was added to the NetBSD tree.  I'd be using RAIDframe on
my main box for real data if I had more disks, but right now I need those 
disks on my testbox for testing/developing RAIDframe... :-/

There are a few other folks using RAIDframe in various environments.  
I encourage them to speak of their experiences (both positive and negative).

I know that people are wary of running anything that might cause harm 
to their data, and I don't blame them at all.  It can also be hard in 
non-production environments to put together enough disks to make 
playing with RAID even possible.  For the folks who *do* have enough disks,
and have the time/willingness to play with RAIDframe, I encourage them to do 
so, and to report back on their findings.  (I'm still waiting to hear from 
anyone running RAID 5 on a VAX. :->  (The slowest box I've tested RAID 5 on
is a sun3/50))

> What about boot support?

Nothing yet, unfortunately.  :-(

Later...

Greg Oster