Mark Cullen writes:
> 
> Ok, well I want to apologise! I said -c didn't seem to want to work, but 
> I have tried it just now and it actually works fine, and labels the 
> newly re-added disk as "failed" instead of "optimal", as with -C, which 
> is what I would have expected to happen!
> 
> After adding the new disk, however, I cannot do an -i. I have to first 
> do a -R and rebuild the disk, and then I can do an -i. Is this correct? 

'-i' only works to initialize a complete RAID set.  In your case, it 
has flagged one of the components as 'failed', which means you need 
to rebuild it.. 

> This would mean that the 'master' would always be the first working drive?

Yes.
 
> Don't get me wrong, I am actually really quite impressed with it all! At 
> first the configuration seemed quite difficult compared to a vinum 
> configuration, but it's really not that bad at all once you've been 
> through it, even just once.
> 
> Oh, and I tried adding a spare and reconstructing from that. It actually 
> wasn't `raidctl -R absent raid0`, it was `raidctl -R component1 raid0`, 

Oh.. right :) (Been a while since I've done that :) )

> but it did indeed work as you said, and the spare disk got transformed 
> in to a, uhm, non-spare disk after a quick reboot. That, I like!
> 
> 
> One last question (I think). Is it safe to use RAIDFrame on a UFS2 FS, 
> with softdep enabled? 

What filesystem you put on top of RAIDframe is of little concern to 
RAIDframe.  Softdep shouldn't have any more or fewer problems than it 
would have on a single spindle...  (I havn't run softdeps in ages, 
but I have run UFS2, UFS, and LFS on top of RAIDframe RAID sets...)

> The extend of testing I have done so far is 
> copying the pkgsrc tree over to the array. Are there any good stress 
> testers for filesystems? Would copying, moving, deleteing and changing 
> permissions of multiple copies of the pkgsrc tree be a reasonably good 
> stress test?

Dunno... it depends on what your criteria are for a successful test 
:)  (I usually just do a bunch of simultanous extractions of 
pkgsrc.tar.gz, coupled with some concurrent "rm -rf"'s of those same 
pkgsrc directories after they've been running for a bit :)  When the 
it seems to be surviving for a few hours at a 150 load average, I 
figure it's working reasonably well ;) )

> I've actually ordered a new disk, and I hope to switch over to NetBSD 
> sometime next week if all goes well. Hopefully I won't run in to any 
> strange issues :-)
> 
> Thanks all!

Later...

Greg Oster