path: root/sbin/vinum/vinum.8

.\"  Hey, Emacs, edit this file in -*- nroff-fill -*- mode
.\"-
.\" Copyright (c) 1997, 1998
.\"	Nan Yang Computer Services Limited.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\"  This software is distributed under the so-called ``Berkeley
.\"  License'':
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
.\"    must display the following acknowledgement:
.\"	This product includes software developed by Nan Yang Computer
.\"      Services Limited.
.\" 4. Neither the name of the Company nor the names of its contributors
.\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\"    without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" This software is provided ``as is'', and any express or implied
.\" warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of
.\" merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed.
.\" In no event shall the company or contributors be liable for any
.\" direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential
.\" damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute
.\" goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business
.\" interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether
.\" in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or
.\" otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if
.\" advised of the possibility of such damage.
.\"
.\" $Id: vinum.8,v 1.15 2001/05/14 01:10:37 grog Exp grog $
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd December 20, 2000
.Dt VINUM 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm vinum
.Nd Logical Volume Manager control program
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Ar command
.Op Fl options
.Sh COMMANDS
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Ic attach Ar plex volume Op Cm rename
.It Xo
.Ic attach Ar subdisk plex
.Op Ar offset
.Op Cm rename
.Xc
Attach a plex to a volume, or a subdisk to a plex.
.It Xo
.Ic checkparity Ar plex
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl v
.Xc
Check the parity blocks of a RAID-4 or RAID-5 plex.
.It Xo
.Ic concat
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl v
.Ar drives
.Xc
Create a concatenated volume from the specified drives.
.It Xo
.Ic create
.Op Fl f
.Ar description-file
.Xc
Create a volume as described in
.Ar description-file .
.It Ic debug
Cause the volume manager to enter the kernel debugger.
.It Ic debug Ar flags
Set debugging flags.
.It Xo
.Ic detach
.Op Fl f
.Op Ar plex | subdisk
.Xc
Detach a plex or subdisk from the volume or plex to which it is attached.
.It Ic dumpconfig Op Ar drive ...
List the configuration information stored on the specified drives, or all drives
in the system if no drive names are specified.
.It Xo
.Ic info
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Xc
List information about volume manager state.
.It Xo
.Ic init
.Op Fl S Ar size
.Op Fl w
.Ar plex | subdisk
.Xc
.\" XXX
Initialize the contents of a subdisk or all the subdisks of a plex to all zeros.
.It Ic label Ar volume
Create a volume label.
.It Xo
.Ic l | list
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
List information about specified objects.
.It Xo
.Ic ld
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume
.Xc
List information about drives.
.It Xo
.Ic ls
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar subdisk
.Xc
List information about subdisks.
.It Xo
.Ic lp
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar plex
.Xc
List information about plexes.
.It Xo
.Ic lv
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume
.Xc
List information about volumes.
.It Ic makedev
Remake the device nodes in
.Pa /dev/vinum .
.It Xo
.Ic mirror
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Ar drives
.Xc
Create a mirrored volume from the specified drives.
.It Xo
.Ic move | mv
.Fl f
.Ar drive object ...
.Xc
Move the object(s) to the specified drive.
.It Ic printconfig Op Ar file
Write a copy of the current configuration to
.Ar file .
.It Ic quit
Exit the
.Nm
utility when running in interactive mode.  Normally this would be done by
entering the
.Dv EOF
character.
.It Ic read Ar disk ...
Read the
.Nm
configuration from the specified disks.
.It Xo
.Ic rename Op Fl r
.Op Ar drive | subdisk | plex | volume
.Ar newname
.Xc
Change the name of the specified object.
.\" XXX
.\".It Ic replace Ar drive newdrive
.\"Move all the subdisks from the specified drive onto the new drive.
.It Xo
.Ic rebuildparity Ar plex Op Fl f
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Xc
Rebuild the parity blocks of a RAID-4 or RAID-5 plex.
.It Ic resetconfig
Reset the complete
.Nm
configuration.
.It Xo
.Ic resetstats
.Op Fl r
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
Reset statistics counters for the specified objects, or for all objects if none
are specified.
.It Xo
.Ic rm
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl r
.Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
Remove an object.
.It Ic saveconfig
Save
.Nm
configuration to disk after configuration failures.
.\" XXX
.\".It Xo
.\".Ic set
.\".Op Fl f
.\".Ar state
.\".Ar volume | plex | subdisk | disk
.\".Xc
.\"Set the state of the object to
.\".Ar state .
.It Ic setdaemon Op Ar value
Set daemon configuration.
.It Xo
.Ic setstate
.Ar state
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk | drive
.Xc
Set state without influencing other objects, for diagnostic purposes only.
.It Ic start
Read configuration from all vinum drives.
.It Xo
.Ic start
.Op Fl i Ar interval
.Op Fl S Ar size
.Op Fl w
.Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
Allow the system to access the objects.
.It Xo
.Ic stop
.Op Fl f
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
Terminate access to the objects, or stop
.Nm
if no parameters are specified.
.It Xo
.Ic stripe
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl v
.Ar drives
.Xc
Create a striped volume from the specified drives.
.El
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility communicates with the kernel component of the Vinum
logical volume manager.
It is designed either for interactive use, when started without command line
arguments, or to execute a single command if the command is supplied on the
command line.  In interactive mode,
.Nm
maintains a command line history.
.Sh OPTIONS
.Nm
commands may optionally be followed by an option.  Any of the following options
may be specified with any command, but in some cases the options are ignored.
For example, the
.Ic stop
command ignores the
.Fl v
and
.Fl V
options.
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl f
The
.Fl f
.Pq Dq force
option overrides safety checks.  Use with extreme care.  This option is for
emergency use only.  For example, the command
.Pp
.Dl rm -f myvolume
.Pp
removes
.Ar myvolume
even if it is open.  Any subsequent access to the volume will almost certainly
cause a panic.
.It Fl i Ar millisecs
When performing the
.Ic init
and
.Ic start
commands, wait
.Ar millisecs
milliseconds between copying each block.  This lowers the load on the system.
.It Fl n Ar name
Use the
.Fl n
option to specify a volume name to the simplified configuration commands
.Ic concat , mirror
and
.Ic stripe .
.It Fl r
The
.Fl r
.Pq Dq recursive
option is used by the list commands to display information not
only about the specified objects, but also about subordinate objects.  For
example, in conjunction with the
.Ic lv
command, the
.Fl r
option will also show information about the plexes and subdisks belonging to the
volume.
.It Fl s
The
.Fl s
.Pq Dq statistics
option is used by the list commands to display statistical information.  The
.Ic mirror
command also uses this option to specify that it should create striped plexes.
.It Fl S Ar size
The
.Fl S
option specifies the transfer size for the
.Ic init
and
.Ic start
commands.
.It Fl v
The
.Fl v
.Pq Dq verbose
option can be used to request more detailed information.
.It Fl V
The
.Fl V
.Pq Dq Very verbose
option can be used to request more detailed information than the
.Fl v
option provides.
.It Fl w
The
.Fl w
.Pq Dq wait
option tells
.Nm
to wait for completion of commands which normally run in the background, such as
.Ic init .
.El
.Sh COMMANDS IN DETAIL
.Nm
commands perform the following functions:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width indent -compact
.It Ic attach Ar plex volume Op Cm rename
.It Xo
.Ic attach Ar subdisk plex
.Op Ar offset
.Op Cm rename
.Xc
.Nm Ic attach
inserts the specified plex or subdisk in a volume or plex.  In the case of a
subdisk, an offset in the plex may be specified.  If it is not, the subdisk will
be attached at the first possible location.  After attaching a plex to a
non-empty volume,
.Nm
reintegrates the plex.
.Pp
If the keyword
.Cm rename
is specified,
.Nm
renames the object (and in the case of a plex, any subordinate subdisks) to fit
in with the default
.Nm
naming convention.  To rename the object to any other name, use the
.Ic rename
command.
.Pp
A number of considerations apply to attaching subdisks:
.Bl -bullet
.It
Subdisks can normally only be attached to concatenated plexes.
.It
If a striped or RAID-5 plex is missing a subdisk (for example after drive
failure), it should be replaced by a subdisk of the same size only.
.It
In order to add further subdisks to a striped or RAID-5 plex, use the
.Fl f
(force) option.  This will corrupt the data in the plex.
.\"No other attachment of
.\"subdisks is currently allowed for striped and RAID-5 plexes.
.It
For concatenated plexes, the
.Ar offset
parameter specifies the offset in blocks from the beginning of the plex.  For
striped and RAID-5 plexes, it specifies the offset of the first block of the
subdisk: in other words, the offset is the numerical position of the subdisk
multiplied by the stripe size.  For example, in a plex with stripe size 271k,
the first subdisk will have offset 0, the second offset 271k, the third 542k,
etc.  This calculation ignores parity blocks in RAID-5 plexes.
.El
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic checkparity
.Ar plex
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl v
.Xc
Check the parity blocks on the specified RAID-4 or RAID-5 plex.  This operation
maintains a pointer in the plex, so it can be stopped and later restarted from
the same position if desired.  In addition, this pointer is used by the
.Ic rebuildparity
command, so rebuilding the parity blocks need only start at the location where
the first parity problem has been detected.
.Pp
If the
.Fl f
flag is specified,
.Ic checkparity
starts checking at the beginning of the plex.  If the
.Fl v
flag is specified,
.Ic checkparity
prints a running progress report.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic concat
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl v
.Ar drives
.Xc
The
.Ic concat
command provides a simplified alternative to the
.Ic create
command for creating volumes with a single concatenated plex.  The largest
contiguous space available on each drive is used to create the subdisks for the
plexes.
.Pp
Normally, the
.Ic concat
command creates an arbitrary name for the volume and its components.  The name
is composed of the text
.Dq Li vinum
and a small integer, for example
.Dq Li vinum3 .
You can override this with the
.Fl n Ar name
option, which assigns the name specified to the volume.  The plexes and subdisks
are named after the volume in the default manner.
.Pp
There is no choice of name for the drives.  If the drives have already been
initialized as
.Nm
drives, the name remains.  Otherwise the drives are given names starting with
the text
.Dq Li vinumdrive
and a small integer, for example
.Dq Li vinumdrive7 .
As with the
.Ic create
command, the
.Fl f
option can be used to specify that a previous name should be overwritten.  The
.Fl v
is used to specify verbose output.
.Pp
See the section
.Sx SIMPLIFIED CONFIGURATION
below for some examples of this
command.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic create
.Op Fl f
.Ar description-file
.Xc
.Nm Ic create
is used to create any object.  In view of the relatively complicated
relationship and the potential dangers involved in creating a
.Nm
object, there is no interactive interface to this function.  If you do not
specify a file name,
.Nm
starts an editor on a temporary file.  If the environment variable
.Ev EDITOR
is set,
.Nm
starts this editor.  If not, it defaults to
.Nm vi .
See the section
.Sx CONFIGURATION FILE
below for more information on the format of
this file.
.Pp
Note that the
.Nm Ic create
function is additive: if you run it multiple times, you will create multiple
copies of all unnamed objects.
.Pp
Normally the
.Ic create
command will not change the names of existing
.Nm
drives, in order to avoid accidentally erasing them.  The correct way to dispose
of no longer wanted
.Nm
drives is to reset the configuration with the
.Ic resetconfig
command.  In some cases, however, it may be necessary to create new data on
.Nm
drives which can no longer be started.  In this case, use the
.Ic create Fl f
command.
.Pp
.It Ic debug
.Nm Ic debug ,
without any arguments, is used to enter the remote kernel debugger.  It is only
activated if
.Nm
is built with the
.Dv VINUMDEBUG
option.  This option will stop the execution of the operating system until the
kernel debugger is exited.  If remote debugging is set and there is no remote
connection for a kernel debugger, it will be necessary to reset the system and
reboot in order to leave the debugger.
.Pp
.It Ic debug Ar flags
Set a bit mask of internal debugging flags.  These will change without warning
as the product matures; to be certain, read the header file
.Aq Pa sys/dev/vinumvar.h .
The bit mask is composed of the following values:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Dv DEBUG_ADDRESSES Pq No 1
Show buffer information during requests
.\".It Dv DEBUG_NUMOUTPUT Pq No 2
.\"Show the value of
.\".Va vp->v_numoutput .
.It Dv DEBUG_RESID Pq No 4
Go into debugger in
.Fn complete_rqe .
.It Dv DEBUG_LASTREQS Pq No 8
Keep a circular buffer of last requests.
.It Dv DEBUG_REVIVECONFLICT Pq No 16
Print info about revive conflicts.
.It Dv DEBUG_EOFINFO Pq No 32
Print information about internal state when returning an
.Dv EOF
on a striped plex.
.It Dv DEBUG_MEMFREE Pq No 64
Maintain a circular list of the last memory areas freed by the memory allocator.
.It Dv DEBUG_REMOTEGDB Pq No 256
Go into remote
.Nm gdb
when the
.Ic debug
command is issued.
.It Dv DEBUG_WARNINGS Pq No 512
Print some warnings about minor problems in the implementation.
.El
.Pp
.It Ic detach Oo Fl f Oc Ar plex
.It Ic detach Oo Fl f Oc Ar subdisk
.Nm Ic detach
removes the specified plex or subdisk from the volume or plex to which it is
attached.  If removing the object would impair the data integrity of the volume,
the operation will fail unless the
.Fl f
option is specified.  If the object is named after the object above it (for
example, subdisk
.Li vol1.p7.s0
attached to plex
.Li vol1.p7 ) ,
the name will be changed
by prepending the text
.Dq Li ex-
(for example,
.Li ex-vol1.p7.s0 ) .
If necessary, the name will be truncated in the
process.
.Pp
.Ic detach
does not reduce the number of subdisks in a striped or RAID-5 plex.  Instead,
the subdisk is marked absent, and can later be replaced with the
.Ic attach
command.
.Pp
.It Ic dumpconfig Op Ar drive ...
.Pp
.Nm Ic dumpconfig
shows the configuration information stored on the specified drives.  If no drive
names are specified,
.Ic dumpconfig
searches all drives on the system for Vinum partitions and dumps the
information.  If configuration updates are disabled, it is possible that this
information is not the same as the information returned by the
.Ic list
command.  This command is used primarily for maintenance and debugging.
.Pp
.It Ic info
.Nm Ic info
displays information about
.Nm
memory usage.  This is intended primarily for debugging.  With the
.Fl v
option, it will give detailed information about the memory areas in use.
.Pp
With the
.Fl V
option,
.Ic info
displays information about the last up to 64 I/O requests handled by the
.Nm
driver.  This information is only collected if debug flag 8 is set.  The format
looks like:
.Bd -literal
vinum -> info -V
Flags: 0x200    1 opens
Total of 38 blocks malloced, total memory: 16460
Maximum allocs:       56, malloc table at 0xf0f72dbc

Time             Event       Buf        Dev     Offset          Bytes   SD      SDoff   Doffset Goffset

14:40:00.637758 1VS Write 0xf2361f40    91.3  0x10            16384
14:40:00.639280 2LR Write 0xf2361f40    91.3  0x10            16384
14:40:00.639294 3RQ Read  0xf2361f40    4.39   0x104109        8192    19      0       0       0
14:40:00.639455 3RQ Read  0xf2361f40    4.23   0xd2109         8192    17      0       0       0
14:40:00.639529 3RQ Read  0xf2361f40    4.15   0x6e109         8192    16      0       0       0
14:40:00.652978 4DN Read  0xf2361f40    4.39   0x104109        8192    19      0       0       0
14:40:00.667040 4DN Read  0xf2361f40    4.15   0x6e109         8192    16      0       0       0
14:40:00.668556 4DN Read  0xf2361f40    4.23   0xd2109         8192    17      0       0       0
14:40:00.669777 6RP Write 0xf2361f40    4.39   0x104109        8192    19      0       0       0
14:40:00.685547 4DN Write 0xf2361f40    4.39   0x104109        8192    19      0       0       0
11:11:14.975184 Lock      0xc2374210    2      0x1f8001
11:11:15.018400 7VS Write 0xc2374210           0x7c0           32768   10
11:11:15.018456 8LR Write 0xc2374210    13.39  0xcc0c9         32768
11:11:15.046229 Unlock    0xc2374210    2      0x1f8001
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Ar Buf
field always contains the address of the user buffer header.  This can be used
to identify the requests associated with a user request, though this is not 100%
reliable: theoretically two requests in sequence could use the same buffer
header, though this is not common.  The beginning of a request can be identified
by the event
.Ar 1VS
or
.Ar 7VS .
The first example above shows the requests involved in a user request.  The
second is a subdisk I/O request with locking.
.Pp
The
.Ar Event
field contains information related to the sequence of events in the request
chain.  The digit
.Ar 1
to
.Ar 6
indicates the approximate sequence of events, and the two-letter abbreviation is
a mnemonic for the location:
.Bl -tag -width Lockwait
.It 1VS
(vinumstrategy) shows information about the user request on entry to
.Fn vinumstrategy .
The device number is the
.Nm
device, and offset and length are the user parameters.  This is always the
beginning of a request sequence.
.It 2LR
(launch_requests) shows the user request just prior to launching the low-level
.Nm
requests in the function
.Fn launch_requests .
The parameters should be the same as in the
.Ar 1VS
information.
.El
.Pp
In the following requests,
.Ar Dev
is the device number of the associated disk partition,
.Ar Offset
is the offset from the beginning of the partition,
.Ar SD
is the subdisk index in
.Va vinum_conf ,
.Ar SDoff
is the offset from the beginning of the subdisk,
.Ar Doffset
is the offset of the associated data request, and
.Ar Goffset
is the offset of the associated group request, where applicable.
.Bl -tag -width Lockwait
.It 3RQ
(request) shows one of possibly several low-level
.Nm
requests which are launched to satisfy the high-level request.  This information
is also logged in
.Fn launch_requests .
.It 4DN
(done) is called from
.Fn complete_rqe ,
showing the completion of a request.  This completion should match a request
launched either at stage
.Ar 4DN
from
.Fn launch_requests ,
or from
.Fn complete_raid5_write
at stage
.Ar 5RD
or
.Ar 6RP .
.It 5RD
(RAID-5 data) is called from
.Fn complete_raid5_write
and represents the data written to a RAID-5 data stripe after calculating
parity.
.It 6RP
(RAID-5 parity) is called from
.Fn complete_raid5_write
and represents the data written to a RAID-5 parity stripe after calculating
parity.
.It 7VS
shows a subdisk I/O request.  These requests are usually internal to
.Nm
for operations like initialization or rebuilding plexes.
.It 8LR
shows the low-level operation generated for a subdisk I/O request.
.It Lockwait
specifies that the process is waiting for a range lock.  The parameters are the
buffer header associated with the request, the plex number and the block number.
For internal reasons the block number is one higher than the address of the
beginning of the stripe.
.It Lock
specifies that a range lock has been obtained.  The parameters are the same as
for the range lock.
.It Unlock
specifies that a range lock has been released.  The parameters are the same as
for the range lock.
.El
.\" XXX
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic init
.Op Fl S Ar size
.Op Fl w
.Ar plex | subdisk
.Xc
.Nm Ic init
initializes a subdisk by writing zeroes to it.  You can initialize all subdisks
in a plex by specifying the plex name.  This is the only way to ensure
consistent data in a plex.  You must perform this initialization before using a
RAID-5 plex.  It is also recommended for other new plexes.
.Nm
initializes all subdisks of a plex in parallel.  Since this operation can take a
long time, it is normally performed in the background.  If you want to wait for
completion of the command, use the
.Fl w
(wait) option.
.Pp
Specify the
.Fl S
option if you want to write blocks of a different size from the default value of
16 kB.
.Nm
prints a console message when the initialization is complete.
.Pp
.It Ic label Ar volume
The
.Ic label
command writes a
.Em ufs
style volume label on a volume.  It is a simple alternative to an appropriate
call to
.Ic disklabel .
This is needed because some
.Em ufs
commands still read the disk to find the label instead of using the correct
.Xr ioctl 2
call to access it.
.Nm
maintains a volume label separately from the volume data, so this command is not
needed for
.Xr newfs 8 .
This command is deprecated.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic list
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
.It Xo
.Ic l
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
.It Xo
.Ic ld
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume
.Xc
.It Xo
.Ic ls
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar subdisk
.Xc
.It Xo
.Ic lp
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar plex
.Xc
.It Xo
.Ic lv
.Op Fl r
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Op Ar volume
.Xc
.Ic list
is used to show information about the specified object.  If the argument is
omitted, information is shown about all objects known to
.Nm .
The
.Ic l
command is a synonym for
.Ic list .
.Pp
The
.Fl r
option relates to volumes and plexes: if specified, it recursively lists
information for the subdisks and (for a volume) plexes subordinate to the
objects.  The commands
.Ic lv , lp , ls
and
.Ic ld
list only volumes, plexes, subdisks and drives respectively.  This is
particularly useful when used without parameters.
.Pp
The
.Fl s
option causes
.Nm
to output device statistics, the
.Fl v
(verbose) option causes some additional information to be output, and the
.Fl V
causes considerable additional information to be output.
.Pp
.It Ic makedev
The
.Ic makedev
command removes the directory
.Pa /dev/vinum
and recreates it with device nodes
which reflect the current configuration.  This command is not intended for
general use, and is provided for emergency use only.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic mirror
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl v
.Ar drives
.Xc
The
.Ic mirror
command provides a simplified alternative to the
.Ic create
command for creating mirrored volumes.  Without any options, it creates a RAID-1
(mirrored) volume with two concatenated plexes.  The largest contiguous space
available on each drive is used to create the subdisks for the plexes.  The
first plex is built from the odd-numbered drives in the list, and the second
plex is built from the even-numbered drives.  If the drives are of different
sizes, the plexes will be of different sizes.
.Pp
If the
.Fl s
option is provided,
.Ic mirror
builds striped plexes with a stripe size of 279 kB.  The size of the subdisks in
each plex is the size of the smallest contiguous storage available on any of the
drives which form the plex.  Again, the plexes may differ in size.
.Pp
Normally, the
.Ic mirror
command creates an arbitrary name for the volume and its components.  The name
is composed of the text
.Dq Li vinum
and a small integer, for example
.Dq Li vinum3 .
You can override this with the
.Fl n Ar name
option, which assigns the name specified to the volume.  The plexes and subdisks
are named after the volume in the default manner.
.Pp
There is no choice of name for the drives.  If the drives have already been
initialized as
.Nm
drives, the name remains.  Otherwise the drives are given names starting with
the text
.Dq Li vinumdrive
and a small integer, for example
.Dq Li vinumdrive7 .
As with the
.Ic create
command, the
.Fl f
option can be used to specify that a previous name should be overwritten.  The
.Fl v
is used to specify verbose output.
.Pp
See the section
.Sx SIMPLIFIED CONFIGURATION
below for some examples of this
command.
.Pp
.It Ic mv Fl f Ar drive object ...
.It Ic move Fl f Ar drive object ...
Move all the subdisks from the specified objects onto the new drive.  The
objects may be subdisks, drives or plexes.  When drives or plexes are specified,
all subdisks associated with the object are moved.
.Pp
The
.Fl f
option is required for this function, since it currently does not preserve the
data in the subdisk.  This functionality will be added at a later date.  In this
form, however, it is suited to recovering a failed disk drive.
.Pp
.It Ic printconfig Op Ar file
Write a copy of the current configuration to
.Ar file
in a format that can be used to recreate the
.Nm
configuration.  Unlike the configuration saved on disk, it includes definitions
of the drives.  If you omit
.Ar file ,
.Nm
writes the list to
.Dv stdout .
.Pp
.It Ic quit
Exit the
.Nm
utility when running in interactive mode.  Normally this would be done by
entering the
.Dv EOF
character.
.Pp
.It Ic read Ar disk ...
The
.Ic read
command scans the specified disks for
.Nm
partitions containing previously created configuration information.  It reads
the configuration in order from the most recently updated to least recently
updated configuration.
The
.Nm
utility
maintains an up-to-date copy of all configuration information on each disk
partition.  You must specify all of the slices in a configuration as the
parameter to this command.
.Pp
The
.Ic read
command is intended to selectively load a
.Nm
configuration on a system which has other
.Nm
partitions.  If you want to start all partitions on the system, it is easier to
use the
.Ic start
command.
.Pp
If
.Nm
encounters any errors during this command, it will turn off automatic
configuration update to avoid corrupting the copies on disk.  This will also
happen if the configuration on disk indicates a configuration error (for
example, subdisks which do not have a valid space specification).  You can turn
the updates on again with the
.Ic setdaemon
and
.Ic saveconfig
commands.  Reset bit 2 (numerical value 4) of the daemon options mask to
re-enable configuration saves.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic rebuildparity
.Ar plex
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl V
.Xc
Rebuild the parity blocks on the specified RAID-4 or RAID-5 plex.  This
operation maintains a pointer in the plex, so it can be stopped and later
restarted from the same position if desired.  In addition, this pointer is used
by the
.Ic checkparity
command, so rebuilding the parity blocks need only start at the location where
the first parity problem has been detected.
.Pp
If the
.Fl f
flag is specified,
.Ic rebuildparity
starts rebuilding at the beginning of the plex.  If the
.Fl v
flag is specified,
.Ic rebuildparity
first checks the existing parity blocks prints information about those found to
be incorrect before rebuilding.  If the
.Fl V
flag is specified,
.Ic rebuildparity
prints a running progress report.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic rename
.Op Fl r
.Op Ar drive | subdisk | plex | volume
.Ar newname
.Xc
Change the name of the specified object.  If the
.Fl r
option is specified, subordinate objects will be named by the default rules:
plex names will be formed by appending
.Li .p Ns Ar number
to the volume name, and
subdisk names will be formed by appending
.Li .s Ns Ar number
to the plex name.
.\".Pp
.\".It Xo
.\".Ic replace
.\".Ar drive newdrive
.\"Move all the subdisks from the specified drive onto the new drive.  This will
.\"attempt to recover those subdisks that can be recovered, and create the others
.\"from scratch.  If the new drive lacks the space for this operation, as many
.\"subdisks as possible will be fitted onto the drive, and the rest will be left on
.\"the original drive.
.Pp
.It Ic resetconfig
The
.Ic resetconfig
command completely obliterates the
.Nm
configuration on a system.  Use this command only when you want to completely
delete the configuration.
.Nm
will ask for confirmation; you must type in the words
.Li "NO FUTURE"
exactly as shown:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
.No # Nm Ic resetconfig

WARNING!  This command will completely wipe out your vinum
configuration.  All data will be lost.  If you really want
to do this, enter the text

NO FUTURE
.No "Enter text ->" Sy "NO FUTURE"
Vinum configuration obliterated
.Ed
.Pp
As the message suggests, this is a last-ditch command.  Don't use it unless you
have an existing configuration which you never want to see again.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic resetstats
.Op Fl r
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
.Nm
maintains a number of statistical counters for each object.  See the header file
.Aq Pa sys/dev/vinumvar.h
for more information.
.\" XXX put it in here when it's finalized
Use the
.Ic resetstats
command to reset these counters.  In conjunction with the
.Fl r
option,
.Nm
also resets the counters of subordinate objects.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic rm
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl r
.Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
.Ic rm
removes an object from the
.Nm
configuration.  Once an object has been removed, there is no way to recover it.
Normally
.Nm
performs a large amount of consistency checking before removing an object.  The
.Fl f
option tells
.Nm
to omit this checking and remove the object anyway.  Use this option with great
care: it can result in total loss of data on a volume.
.Pp
Normally,
.Nm
refuses to remove a volume or plex if it has subordinate plexes or subdisks
respectively.  You can tell
.Nm
to remove the object anyway by using the
.Fl f
option, or you can cause
.Nm
to remove the subordinate objects as well by using the
.Fl r
(recursive) option.  If you remove a volume with the
.Fl r
option, it will remove both the plexes and the subdisks which belong to the
plexes.
.Pp
.It Ic saveconfig
Save the current configuration to disk.  Normally this is not necessary, since
.Nm
automatically saves any change in configuration.  If an error occurs on startup,
updates will be disabled.  When you reenable them with the
.Ic setdaemon
command,
.Nm
does not automatically save the configuration to disk.  Use this command to save
the configuration.
.\".Pp
.\".It Xo
.\".Ic set
.\".Op Fl f
.\".Ar state
.\".Ar volume | plex | subdisk | disk
.\".Xc
.\".Ic set
.\"sets the state of the specified object to one of the valid states (see
.\".Sx OBJECT STATES
.\"below).  Normally
.\".Nm
.\"performs a large amount of consistency checking before making the change.  The
.\".Fl f
.\"option tells
.\".Nm
.\"to omit this checking and perform the change anyway.  Use this option with great
.\"care: it can result in total loss of data on a volume.
.Pp
.It Ic setdaemon Op Ar value
.Ic setdaemon
sets a variable bitmask for the
.Nm
daemon.  This command is temporary and will be replaced.  Currently, the bit mask
may contain the bits 1 (log every action to syslog) and 4 (don't update
configuration).  Option bit 4 can be useful for error recovery.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic setstate Ar state
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk | drive
.Xc
.Ic setstate
sets the state of the specified objects to the specified state.  This bypasses
the usual consistency mechanism of
.Nm
and should be used only for recovery purposes.  It is possible to crash the
system by incorrect use of this command.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic start
.Op Fl i Ar interval
.Op Fl S Ar size
.Op Fl w
.Op Ar plex | subdisk
.Xc
.Ic start
starts (brings into to the
.Em up
state) one or more
.Nm
objects.
.Pp
If no object names are specified,
.Nm
scans the disks known to the system for
.Nm
drives and then reads in the configuration as described under the
.Ic read
commands.  The
.Nm
drive contains a header with all information about the data stored on the drive,
including the names of the other drives which are required in order to represent
plexes and volumes.
.Pp
If
.Nm
encounters any errors during this command, it will turn off automatic
configuration update to avoid corrupting the copies on disk.  This will also
happen if the configuration on disk indicates a configuration error (for
example, subdisks which do not have a valid space specification).  You can turn
the updates on again with the
.Ic setdaemon
and
.Ic saveconfig
command.  Reset bit 4 of the daemon options mask to re-enable configuration
saves.
.Pp
If object names are specified,
.Nm
starts them.  Normally this operation is only of use with subdisks.  The action
depends on the current state of the object:
.Bl -bullet
.It
If the object is already in the
.Em up
state,
.Nm
does nothing.
.It
If the object is a subdisk in the
.Em down
or
.Em reborn
states,
.Nm
changes it to the
.Em up
state.
.It
If the object is a subdisk in the
.Em empty
state, the change depends on the subdisk.  If it is part of a plex which is part
of a volume which contains other plexes,
.Nm
places the subdisk in the
.Em reviving
state and attempts to copy the data from the volume.  When the operation
completes, the subdisk is set into the
.Em up
state.  If it is part of a plex which is part of a volume which contains no
other plexes, or if it is not part of a plex,
.Nm
brings it into the
.Em up
state immediately.
.It
If the object is a subdisk in the
.Em reviving
state,
.Nm
continues the revive
operation offline.  When the operation completes, the subdisk is set into the
.Em up
state.
.El
.Pp
When a subdisk comes into the
.Em up
state,
.Nm
automatically checks the state of any plex and volume to which it may belong and
changes their state where appropriate.
.Pp
If the object is a plex,
.Ic start
checks the state of the subordinate subdisks (and plexes in the case of a
volume) and starts any subdisks which can be started.
.Pp
To start a plex in a multi-plex volume, the data must be copied from another
plex in the volume.  Since this frequently takes a long time, it is normally
done in the background.  If you want to wait for this operation to complete (for
example, if you are performing this operation in a script), use the
.Fl w
option.
.Pp
Copying data doesn't just take a long time, it can also place a significant load
on the system.  You can specify the transfer size in bytes or sectors with the
.Fl S
option, and an interval (in milliseconds) to wait between copying each block with
the
.Fl i
option.  Both of these options lessen the load on the system.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic stop
.Op Fl f
.Op Ar volume | plex | subdisk
.Xc
If no parameters are specified,
.Ic stop
removes the
.Nm
kld and stops
.Xr vinum 4 .
This can only be done if no objects are active.  In particular, the
.Fl f
option does not override this requirement.  Normally, the
.Ic stop
command writes the current configuration back to the drives before terminating.
This will not be possible if configuration updates are disabled, so
.Nm
will not stop if configuration updates are disabled.  You can override this by
specifying the
.Fl f
option.
.Pp
The
.Ic stop
command can only work if
.Nm
has been loaded as a kld, since it is not possible to unload a statically
configured driver.
.Nm Ic stop
will fail if
.Nm
is statically configured.
.Pp
If object names are specified,
.Ic stop
disables access to the objects.  If the objects have subordinate objects, the
subordinate objects must either already be inactive (stopped or in error), or
the
.Fl r
and
.Fl f
options must be specified.  This command does not remove the objects from the
configuration.  They can be accessed again after a
.Ic start
command.
.Pp
By default,
.Nm
does not stop active objects.  For example, you cannot stop a plex which is
attached to an active volume, and you cannot stop a volume which is open.  The
.Fl f
option tells
.Nm
to omit this checking and remove the object anyway.  Use this option with great
care and understanding: used incorrectly, it can result in serious data
corruption.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ic stripe
.Op Fl f
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl v
.Ar drives
.Xc
The
.Ic stripe
command provides a simplified alternative to the
.Ic create
command for creating volumes with a single striped plex.  The size of the
subdisks is the size of the largest contiguous space available on all the
specified drives.  The stripe size is fixed at 279 kB.
.Pp
Normally, the
.Ic stripe
command creates an arbitrary name for the volume and its components.  The name
is composed of the text
.Dq Li vinum
and a small integer, for example
.Dq Li vinum3 .
You can override this with the
.Fl n Ar name
option, which assigns the name specified to the volume.  The plexes and subdisks
are named after the volume in the default manner.
.Pp
There is no choice of name for the drives.  If the drives have already been
initialized as
.Nm
drives, the name remains.  Otherwise the drives are given names starting with
the text
.Dq Li vinumdrive
and a small integer, for example
.Dq Li vinumdrive7 .
As with the
.Ic create
command, the
.Fl f
option can be used to specify that a previous name should be overwritten.  The
.Fl v
is used to specify verbose output.
.Pp
See the section
.Sx SIMPLIFIED CONFIGURATION
below for some examples of this
command.
.El
.Sh SIMPLIFIED CONFIGURATION
This section describes a simplified interface to
.Nm
configuration using the
.Ic concat ,
.Ic mirror
and
.Ic stripe
commands.  These commands create convenient configurations for some more normal
situations, but they are not as flexible as the
.Ic create
command.
.Pp
See above for the description of the commands.  Here are some examples, all
performed with the same collection of disks.  Note that the first drive,
.Pa /dev/da1h ,
is smaller than the others.  This has an effect on the sizes chosen for each
kind of subdisk.
.Pp
The following examples all use the
.Fl v
option to show the commands passed to the system, and also to list the structure
of the volume.  Without the
.Fl v
option, these commands produce no output.
.Ss Volume with a single concatenated plex
Use a volume with a single concatenated plex for the largest possible storage
without resilience to drive failures:
.Bd -literal
vinum -> concat -v /dev/da1h /dev/da2h /dev/da3h /dev/da4h
volume vinum0
  plex name vinum0.p0 org concat
drive vinumdrive0 device /dev/da1h
    sd name vinum0.p0.s0 drive vinumdrive0 size 0
drive vinumdrive1 device /dev/da2h
    sd name vinum0.p0.s1 drive vinumdrive1 size 0
drive vinumdrive2 device /dev/da3h
    sd name vinum0.p0.s2 drive vinumdrive2 size 0
drive vinumdrive3 device /dev/da4h
    sd name vinum0.p0.s3 drive vinumdrive3 size 0
V vinum0                State: up       Plexes:       1 Size:       2134 MB
P vinum0.p0           C State: up       Subdisks:     4 Size:       2134 MB
S vinum0.p0.s0          State: up       D: vinumdrive0  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s1          State: up       D: vinumdrive1  Size:        573 MB
S vinum0.p0.s2          State: up       D: vinumdrive2  Size:        573 MB
S vinum0.p0.s3          State: up       D: vinumdrive3  Size:        573 MB
.Ed
.Pp
In this case, the complete space on all four disks was used, giving a volume
2134 MB in size.
.Ss Volume with a single striped plex
A volume with a single striped plex may give better performance than a
concatenated plex, but restrictions on striped plexes can mean that the volume
is smaller.  It will also not be resilient to a drive failure:
.Bd -literal
vinum -> stripe -v /dev/da1h /dev/da2h /dev/da3h /dev/da4h
drive vinumdrive0 device /dev/da1h
drive vinumdrive1 device /dev/da2h
drive vinumdrive2 device /dev/da3h
drive vinumdrive3 device /dev/da4h
volume vinum0
  plex name vinum0.p0 org striped 279k
    sd name vinum0.p0.s0 drive vinumdrive0 size 849825b
    sd name vinum0.p0.s1 drive vinumdrive1 size 849825b
    sd name vinum0.p0.s2 drive vinumdrive2 size 849825b
    sd name vinum0.p0.s3 drive vinumdrive3 size 849825b
V vinum0                State: up       Plexes:       1 Size:       1659 MB
P vinum0.p0           S State: up       Subdisks:     4 Size:       1659 MB
S vinum0.p0.s0          State: up       D: vinumdrive0  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s1          State: up       D: vinumdrive1  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s2          State: up       D: vinumdrive2  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s3          State: up       D: vinumdrive3  Size:        414 MB
.Ed
.Pp
In this case, the size of the subdisks has been limited to the smallest
available disk, so the resulting volume is only 1659 MB in size.
.Ss Mirrored volume with two concatenated plexes
For more reliability, use a mirrored, concatenated volume:
.Bd -literal
vinum -> mirror -v -n mirror /dev/da1h /dev/da2h /dev/da3h /dev/da4h
drive vinumdrive0 device /dev/da1h
drive vinumdrive1 device /dev/da2h
drive vinumdrive2 device /dev/da3h
drive vinumdrive3 device /dev/da4h
volume mirror setupstate
  plex name mirror.p0 org concat
    sd name mirror.p0.s0 drive vinumdrive0 size 0b
    sd name mirror.p0.s1 drive vinumdrive2 size 0b
  plex name mirror.p1 org concat
    sd name mirror.p1.s0 drive vinumdrive1 size 0b
    sd name mirror.p1.s1 drive vinumdrive3 size 0b
V mirror                State: up       Plexes:       2 Size:       1146 MB
P mirror.p0           C State: up       Subdisks:     2 Size:        988 MB
P mirror.p1           C State: up       Subdisks:     2 Size:       1146 MB
S vinum0.p0.s0          State: up       D: vinumdrive0  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s2          State: up       D: vinumdrive2  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s1          State: up       D: vinumdrive1  Size:        414 MB
S vinum0.p0.s3          State: up       D: vinumdrive3  Size:        414 MB
.Ed
.Pp
This example specifies the name of the volume,
.Ar mirror .
Since one drive is smaller than the others, the two plexes are of different
size, and the last 158 MB of the volume is non-resilient.  To ensure complete
reliability in such a situation, use the
.Ic create
command to create a volume with 988 MB.
.Ss Mirrored volume with two striped plexes
Alternatively, use the
.Fl s
option to create a mirrored volume with two striped plexes:
.Bd -literal
vinum -> mirror -v -n raid10 -s /dev/da1h /dev/da2h /dev/da3h /dev/da4h
drive vinumdrive0 device /dev/da1h
drive vinumdrive1 device /dev/da2h
drive vinumdrive2 device /dev/da3h
drive vinumdrive3 device /dev/da4h
volume raid10 setupstate
  plex name raid10.p0 org striped 279k
    sd name raid10.p0.s0 drive vinumdrive0 size 849825b
    sd name raid10.p0.s1 drive vinumdrive2 size 849825b
  plex name raid10.p1 org striped 279k
    sd name raid10.p1.s0 drive vinumdrive1 size 1173665b
    sd name raid10.p1.s1 drive vinumdrive3 size 1173665b
V raid10                State: up       Plexes:       2 Size:       1146 MB
P raid10.p0           S State: up       Subdisks:     2 Size:        829 MB
P raid10.p1           S State: up       Subdisks:     2 Size:       1146 MB
S raid10.p0.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:        414 MB
S raid10.p0.s1          State: up       PO:      279 kB Size:        414 MB
S raid10.p1.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:        573 MB
S raid10.p1.s1          State: up       PO:      279 kB Size:        573 MB
.Ed
.Pp
In this case, the usable part of the volume is even smaller, since the first
plex has shrunken to match the smallest drive.
.Sh CONFIGURATION FILE
The
.Nm
utility requires that all parameters to the
.Ic create
commands must be in a configuration file.  Entries in the configuration file
define volumes, plexes and subdisks, and may be in free format, except that each
entry must be on a single line.
.Ss Scale factors
Some configuration file parameters specify a size (lengths, stripe sizes).
These values can be specified as bytes, or one of the following scale factors
may be appended:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It s
specifies that the value is a number of sectors of 512 bytes.
.It k
specifies that the value is a number of kilobytes (1024 bytes).
.It m
specifies that the value is a number of megabytes (1048576 bytes).
.It g
specifies that the value is a number of gigabytes (1073741824 bytes).
.It b
is used for compatibility with
.Tn VERITAS .
It stands for blocks of 512 bytes.
This abbreviation is confusing, since the word
.Dq block
is used in different meanings, and its use is deprecated.  Use the keyword 's'
instead.
.El
.Pp
For example, the value 16777216 bytes can also be written as
.Em 16m ,
.Em 16384k
or
.Em 32768s .
.Pp
The configuration file can contain the following entries:
.Bl -tag -width 4n
.It Ic drive Ar name devicename Op Ar options
Define a drive.  The options are:
.Bl -tag -width 18n
.It Cm device Ar devicename
Specify the device on which the drive resides.
.Ar devicename
must be the name of a disk partition, for example
.Pa /dev/da1e
or
.Pa /dev/ad3s2h ,
and it must be of type
.Em vinum .
Do not use the
.Dq Li c
partition, which is reserved for the complete disk.
.It Cm hotspare
Define the drive to be a
.Dq hot spare
drive, which is maintained to automatically replace a failed drive.
The
.Nm
utility
does not allow this drive to be used for any other purpose.  In particular, it
is not possible to create subdisks on it.  This functionality has not been
completely implemented.
.El
.It Ic volume Ar name Op Ar options
Define a volume with name
.Ar name .
Options are:
.Bl -tag -width 18n
.It Cm plex Ar plexname
Add the specified plex to the volume.  If
.Ar plexname
is specified as
.Cm * ,
.Nm
will look for the definition of the plex as the next possible entry in the
configuration file after the definition of the volume.
.It Cm readpol Ar policy
Define a
.Em read policy
for the volume.
.Ar policy
may be either
.Cm round
or
.Cm prefer Ar plexname .
The
.Nm
utility satisfies a read request from only one of the plexes.  A
.Cm round
read policy specifies that each read should be performed from a different plex
in
.Em round-robin
fashion.  A
.Cm prefer
read policy reads from the specified plex every time.
.It Cm setupstate
When creating a multi-plex volume, assume that the contents of all the plexes
are consistent.  This is normally not the case, so by default
.Nm
sets all plexes except the first one to the
.Em faulty
state.  Use the
.Ic start
command to first bring them to a consistent state.  In the case of striped and
concatenated plexes, however, it does not normally cause problems to leave them
inconsistent: when using a volume for a file system or a swap partition, the
previous contents of the disks are not of interest, so they may be ignored.
If you want to take this risk, use the
.Cm setupstate
keyword.  It will only apply to the plexes defined immediately after the volume
in the configuration file.  If you add plexes to a volume at a later time, you
must integrate them manually with the
.Ic start
command.
.Pp
Note that you
.Em must
use the
.Ic init
command with RAID-5 plexes: otherwise extreme data corruption will result if one
subdisk fails.
.El
.It Ic plex Op Ar options
Define a plex.  Unlike a volume, you do not need to specify a name for a plex.
The options may be:
.Bl -tag -width 18n
.It Cm name Ar plexname
Specify the name of the plex.  Note that you must use the keyword
.Cm name
when naming a plex or subdisk.
.It Cm org Ar organization Op Ar stripesize
Specify the organization of the plex.
.Ar organization
can be one of
.Cm concat , striped
or
.Cm raid5 .
For
.Cm striped
and
.Cm raid5
plexes, the parameter
.Ar stripesize
must be specified, while for
.Cm concat
it must be omitted.  For type
.Cm striped ,
it specifies the width of each stripe.  For type
.Cm raid5 ,
it specifies the size of a group.  A group is a portion of a plex which
stores the parity bits all in the same subdisk.  It must be a factor of the plex size (in
other words, the result of dividing the plex size by the stripe size must be an
integer), and it must be a multiple of a disk sector (512 bytes).
.Pp
For optimum performance, stripes should be at least 128 kB in size: anything
smaller will result in a significant increase in I/O activity due to mapping of
individual requests over multiple disks.  The performance improvement due to the
increased number of concurrent transfers caused by this mapping will not make up
for the performance drop due to the increase in latency.  A good guideline for
stripe size is between 256 kB and 512 kB.  Avoid powers of 2, however: they tend
to cause all superblocks to be placed on the first subdisk.  The simplified
commands use a stripe size of 279 kB, which shows a reasonable distribution of
superblocks.
.Pp
A striped plex must have at least two subdisks (otherwise it is a concatenated
plex), and each must be the same size.  A RAID-5 plex must have at least three
subdisks, and each must be the same size.  In practice, a RAID-5 plex should
have at least 5 subdisks.
.It Cm volume Ar volname
Add the plex to the specified volume.  If no
.Cm volume
keyword is specified, the plex will be added to the last volume mentioned in the
configuration file.
.It Cm sd Ar sdname offset
Add the specified subdisk to the plex at offset
.Ar offset .
.El
.It Ic subdisk Op Ar options
Define a subdisk.  Options may be:
.Bl -hang -width 18n
.It Cm name Ar name
Specify the name of a subdisk.  It is not necessary to specify a name for a
subdisk\(emsee
.Sx OBJECT NAMING
above.  Note that you must specify the keyword
.Cm name
if you wish to name a subdisk.
.It Cm plexoffset Ar offset
Specify the starting offset of the subdisk in the plex.  If not specified,
.Nm
allocates the space immediately after the previous subdisk, if any, or otherwise
at the beginning of the plex.
.It Cm driveoffset Ar offset
Specify the starting offset of the subdisk in the drive.  If not specified,
.Nm
allocates the first contiguous
.Ar length
bytes of free space on the drive.
.It Cm length Ar length
Specify the length of the subdisk.  This keyword must be specified.  There is no
default, but the value 0 may be specified to mean
.Dq "use the largest available contiguous free area on the drive" .
If the drive is empty, this means that the entire drive will be used for the
subdisk.
.Cm length
may be shortened to
.Cm len .
.It Cm plex Ar plex
Specify the plex to which the subdisk belongs.  By default, the subdisk belongs
to the last plex specified.
.It Cm drive Ar drive
Specify the drive on which the subdisk resides.  By default, the subdisk resides
on the last drive specified.
.It Cm retryerrors
Specify that the subdisk should not be taken down if an unrecoverable error
occurs.  Normally
.Nm
responds to an unrecoverable error by making the entire subdisk inaccessible.
.El
.El
.Sh EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION FILE
.Bd -literal
# Sample vinum configuration file
#
# Our drives
drive drive1 device /dev/da1h
drive drive2 device /dev/da2h
drive drive3 device /dev/da3h
drive drive4 device /dev/da4h
drive drive5 device /dev/da5h
drive drive6 device /dev/da6h
# A volume with one striped plex
volume tinyvol
 plex org striped 279k
  sd length 64m drive drive2
  sd length 64m drive drive4
volume stripe
 plex org striped 279k
  sd length 512m drive drive2
  sd length 512m drive drive4
# Two plexes
volume concat
 plex org concat
  sd length 100m drive drive2
  sd length 50m drive drive4
 plex org concat
  sd length 150m drive drive4
# A volume with one striped plex and one concatenated plex
volume strcon
 plex org striped 279k
  sd length 100m drive drive2
  sd length 100m drive drive4
 plex org concat
  sd length 150m drive drive2
  sd length 50m drive drive4
# a volume with a RAID-5 and a striped plex
# note that the RAID-5 volume is longer by
# the length of one subdisk
volume vol5
 plex org striped 491k
  sd length 1000m drive drive2
  sd length 1000m drive drive4
 plex org raid5 273k
  sd length 500m drive drive1
  sd length 500m drive drive2
  sd length 500m drive drive3
  sd length 500m drive drive4
  sd length 500m drive drive5
.Ed
.Sh DRIVE LAYOUT CONSIDERATIONS
.Nm
drives are currently
.Bx
disk partitions.  They must be of type
.Em vinum
in order to avoid overwriting data used for other purposes.  Use
.Nm disklabel Fl e
to edit a partition type definition.  The following display shows a typical
partition layout as shown by
.Xr disklabel 8 :
.Bd -literal
8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:    81920   344064    4.2BSD        0     0     0   # (Cyl.  240*- 297*)
  b:   262144    81920      swap                        # (Cyl.   57*- 240*)
  c:  4226725        0    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 2955*)
  e:    81920        0    4.2BSD        0     0     0   # (Cyl.    0 - 57*)
  f:  1900000   425984    4.2BSD        0     0     0   # (Cyl.  297*- 1626*)
  g:  1900741  2325984     vinum        0     0     0   # (Cyl. 1626*- 2955*)
.Ed
.Pp
In this example, partition
.Dq Li g
may be used as a
.Nm
partition.  Partitions
.Dq Li a ,
.Dq Li e
and
.Dq Li f
may be used as
.Em UFS
file systems or
.Em ccd
partitions.  Partition
.Dq Li b
is a swap partition, and partition
.Dq Li c
represents the whole disk and should not be used for any other purpose.
.Pp
The
.Nm
utility
uses the first 265 sectors on each partition for configuration information, so
the maximum size of a subdisk is 265 sectors smaller than the drive.
.Sh LOG FILE
The
.Nm
utility maintains a log file, by default
.Pa /var/log/vinum_history ,
in which it keeps track of the commands issued to
.Nm .
You can override the name of this file by setting the environment variable
.Ev VINUM_HISTORY
to the name of the file.
.Pp
Each message in the log file is preceded by a date.  The default format is
.Qq Li %e %b %Y %H:%M:%S .
See
.Xr strftime 3
for further details of the format string.  It can be overridden by the
environment variable
.Ev VINUM_DATEFORMAT .
.Sh HOW TO SET UP VINUM
This section gives practical advice about how to implement a
.Nm
system.
.Ss Where to put the data
The first choice you need to make is where to put the data.  You need dedicated
disk partitions for
.Nm .
They should be partitions, not devices, and they should not be partition
.Dq Li c .
For example, good names are
.Pa /dev/da0e
or
.Pa /dev/ad3s4a .
Bad names are
.Pa /dev/da0
and
.Pa /dev/da0s1 ,
both of which represent a device, not a partition, and
.Pa /dev/ad1c ,
which represents a complete disk and should be of type
.Em unused .
See the example under
.Sx DRIVE LAYOUT CONSIDERATIONS
above.
.Ss Designing volumes
The way you set up
.Nm
volumes depends on your intentions.  There are a number of possibilities:
.Bl -enum
.It
You may want to join up a number of small disks to make a reasonable sized file
system.  For example, if you had five small drives and wanted to use all the
space for a single volume, you might write a configuration file like:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d1 device /dev/da2e
drive d2 device /dev/da3e
drive d3 device /dev/da4e
drive d4 device /dev/da5e
drive d5 device /dev/da6e
volume bigger
 plex org concat
   sd length 0 drive d1
   sd length 0 drive d2
   sd length 0 drive d3
   sd length 0 drive d4
   sd length 0 drive d5
.Ed
.Pp
In this case, you specify the length of the subdisks as 0, which means
.Dq "use the largest area of free space that you can find on the drive" .
If the subdisk is the only subdisk on the drive, it will use all available
space.
.It
You want to set up
.Nm
to obtain additional resilience against disk failures.  You have the choice of
RAID-1, also called
.Dq mirroring ,
or RAID-5, also called
.Dq parity .
.Pp
To set up mirroring, create multiple plexes in a volume.  For example, to create
a mirrored volume of 2 GB, you might create the following configuration file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d1 device /dev/da2e
drive d2 device /dev/da3e
volume mirror
 plex org concat
   sd length 2g drive d1
 plex org concat
   sd length 2g drive d2
.Ed
.Pp
When creating mirrored drives, it is important to ensure that the data from each
plex is on a different physical disk so that
.Nm
can access the complete address space of the volume even if a drive fails.
Note that each plex requires as much data as the complete volume: in this
example, the volume has a size of 2 GB, but each plex (and each subdisk)
requires 2 GB, so the total disk storage requirement is 4 GB.
.Pp
To set up RAID-5, create a single plex of type
.Cm raid5 .
For example, to create an equivalent resilient volume of 2 GB, you might use the
following configuration file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d1 device /dev/da2e
drive d2 device /dev/da3e
drive d3 device /dev/da4e
drive d4 device /dev/da5e
drive d5 device /dev/da6e
volume raid
 plex org raid5 433k
   sd length 512m drive d1
   sd length 512m drive d2
   sd length 512m drive d3
   sd length 512m drive d4
   sd length 512m drive d5
.Ed
.Pp
RAID-5 plexes require at least three subdisks, one of which is used for storing
parity information and is lost for data storage.  The more disks you use, the
greater the proportion of the disk storage can be used for data storage.  In
this example, the total storage usage is 2.5 GB, compared to 4 GB for a mirrored
configuration.  If you were to use the minimum of only three disks, you would
require 3 GB to store the information, for example:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d1 device /dev/da2e
drive d2 device /dev/da3e
drive d3 device /dev/da4e
volume raid
 plex org raid5 433k
   sd length 1g drive d1
   sd length 1g drive d2
   sd length 1g drive d3
.Ed
.Pp
As with creating mirrored drives, it is important to ensure that the data from
each subdisk is on a different physical disk so that
.Nm
can access the complete address space of the volume even if a drive fails.
.It
You want to set up
.Nm
to allow more concurrent access to a file system.  In many cases, access to a
file system is limited by the speed of the disk.  By spreading the volume across
multiple disks, you can increase the throughput in multi-access environments.
This technique shows little or no performance improvement in single-access
environments.
The
.Nm
utility uses a technique called
.Dq striping ,
or sometimes RAID-0, to increase this concurrency of access.  The name RAID-0 is
misleading: striping does not provide any redundancy or additional reliability.
In fact, it decreases the reliability, since the failure of a single disk will
render the volume useless, and the more disks you have, the more likely it is
that one of them will fail.
.Pp
To implement striping, use a
.Cm striped
plex:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d1 device /dev/da2e
drive d2 device /dev/da3e
drive d3 device /dev/da4e
drive d4 device /dev/da5e
volume raid
 plex org striped 433k
   sd length 512m drive d1
   sd length 512m drive d2
   sd length 512m drive d3
   sd length 512m drive d4
.Ed
.Pp
A striped plex must have at least two subdisks, but the increase in performance
is greater if you have a larger number of disks.
.It
You may want to have the best of both worlds and have both resilience and
performance.  This is sometimes called RAID-10 (a combination of RAID-1 and
RAID-0), though again this name is misleading.  With
.Nm
you can do this with the following configuration file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d1 device /dev/da2e
drive d2 device /dev/da3e
drive d3 device /dev/da4e
drive d4 device /dev/da5e
volume raid setupstate
 plex org striped 433k
   sd length 512m drive d1
   sd length 512m drive d2
   sd length 512m drive d3
   sd length 512m drive d4
 plex org striped 433k
   sd length 512m drive d4
   sd length 512m drive d3
   sd length 512m drive d2
   sd length 512m drive d1
.Ed
.Pp
Here the plexes are striped, increasing performance, and there are two of them,
increasing reliability.  Note that this example shows the subdisks of the second
plex in reverse order from the first plex.  This is for performance reasons and
will be discussed below.  In addition, the volume specification includes the
keyword
.Cm setupstate ,
which ensures that all plexes are
.Em up
after creation.
.El
.Ss Creating the volumes
Once you have created your configuration files, start
.Nm
and create the volumes.  In this example, the configuration is in the file
.Pa configfile :
.Bd -literal -offset 2n
# vinum create -v configfile
   1: drive d1 device /dev/da2e
   2: drive d2 device /dev/da3e
   3: volume mirror
   4:  plex org concat
   5:    sd length 2g drive d1
   6:  plex org concat
   7:    sd length 2g drive d2
Configuration summary

Drives:         2 (4 configured)
Volumes:        1 (4 configured)
Plexes:         2 (8 configured)
Subdisks:       2 (16 configured)

Drive d1:       Device /dev/da2e
                Created on vinum.lemis.com at Tue Mar 23 12:30:31 1999
                Config last updated Tue Mar 23 14:30:32 1999
                Size:      60105216000 bytes (57320 MB)
                Used:       2147619328 bytes (2048 MB)
                Available: 57957596672 bytes (55272 MB)
                State: up
                Last error: none
Drive d2:       Device /dev/da3e
                Created on vinum.lemis.com at Tue Mar 23 12:30:32 1999
                Config last updated Tue Mar 23 14:30:33 1999
                Size:      60105216000 bytes (57320 MB)
                Used:       2147619328 bytes (2048 MB)
                Available: 57957596672 bytes (55272 MB)
                State: up
                Last error: none

Volume mirror:  Size: 2147483648 bytes (2048 MB)
                State: up
                Flags:
                2 plexes
                Read policy: round robin

Plex mirror.p0: Size:   2147483648 bytes (2048 MB)
                Subdisks:        1
                State: up
                Organization: concat
                Part of volume mirror
Plex mirror.p1: Size:   2147483648 bytes (2048 MB)
                Subdisks:        1
                State: up
                Organization: concat
                Part of volume mirror

Subdisk mirror.p0.s0:
                Size:       2147483648 bytes (2048 MB)
                State: up
                Plex mirror.p0 at offset 0

Subdisk mirror.p1.s0:
                Size:       2147483648 bytes (2048 MB)
                State: up
                Plex mirror.p1 at offset 0
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Fl v
option tells
.Nm
to list the file as it configures.  Subsequently it lists the current
configuration in the same format as the
.Ic list Fl v
command.
.Ss Creating more volumes
Once you have created the
.Nm
volumes,
.Nm
keeps track of them in its internal configuration files.  You do not need to
create them again.  In particular, if you run the
.Ic create
command again, you will create additional objects:
.Bd -literal
# vinum create sampleconfig
Configuration summary

Drives:         2 (4 configured)
Volumes:        1 (4 configured)
Plexes:         4 (8 configured)
Subdisks:       4 (16 configured)

D d1                    State: up       Device /dev/da2e        Avail: 53224/57320 MB (92%)
D d2                    State: up       Device /dev/da3e        Avail: 53224/57320 MB (92%)

V mirror                State: up       Plexes:       4 Size:       2048 MB

P mirror.p0           C State: up       Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P mirror.p1           C State: up       Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P mirror.p2           C State: up       Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P mirror.p3           C State: up       Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB

S mirror.p0.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S mirror.p1.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S mirror.p2.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S mirror.p3.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
.Ed
.Pp
As this example (this time with the
.Fl f
option) shows, re-running the
.Ic create
has created four new plexes, each with a new subdisk.  If you want to add other
volumes, create new configuration files for them.  They do not need to reference
the drives that
.Nm
already knows about.  For example, to create a volume
.Pa raid
on the four drives
.Pa /dev/da1e , /dev/da2e , /dev/da3e
and
.Pa /dev/da4e ,
you only need to mention the other two:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
drive d3 device /dev/da1e
drive d4 device /dev/da4e
volume raid
  plex org raid5 433k
    sd size 2g drive d1
    sd size 2g drive d2
    sd size 2g drive d3
    sd size 2g drive d4
.Ed
.Pp
With this configuration file, we get:
.Bd -literal
# vinum create newconfig
Configuration summary

Drives:         4 (4 configured)
Volumes:        2 (4 configured)
Plexes:         5 (8 configured)
Subdisks:       8 (16 configured)

D d1                    State: up       Device /dev/da2e        Avail: 51176/57320 MB (89%)
D d2                    State: up       Device /dev/da3e        Avail: 53220/57320 MB (89%)
D d3                    State: up       Device /dev/da1e        Avail: 53224/57320 MB (92%)
D d4                    State: up       Device /dev/da4e        Avail: 53224/57320 MB (92%)

V mirror                State: down     Plexes:       4 Size:       2048 MB
V raid                  State: down     Plexes:       1 Size:       6144 MB

P mirror.p0           C State: init     Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P mirror.p1           C State: init     Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P mirror.p2           C State: init     Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P mirror.p3           C State: init     Subdisks:     1 Size:       2048 MB
P raid.p0            R5 State: init     Subdisks:     4 Size:       6144 MB

S mirror.p0.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S mirror.p1.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S mirror.p2.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S mirror.p3.s0          State: up       PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S raid.p0.s0            State: empty    PO:        0  B Size:       2048 MB
S raid.p0.s1            State: empty    PO:      433 kB Size:       2048 MB
S raid.p0.s2            State: empty    PO:      866 kB Size:       2048 MB
S raid.p0.s3            State: empty    PO:     1299 kB Size:       2048 MB
.Ed
.Pp
Note the size of the RAID-5 plex: it is only 6 GB, although together its
components use 8 GB of disk space.  This is because the equivalent of one
subdisk is used for storing parity data.
.Ss Restarting Vinum
On rebooting the system, start
.Nm
with the
.Ic start
command:
.Pp
.Dl "# vinum start"
.Pp
This will start all the
.Nm
drives in the system.  If for some reason you wish to start only some of them,
use the
.Ic read
command.
.Ss Performance considerations
A number of misconceptions exist about how to set up a RAID array for best
performance.  In particular, most systems use far too small a stripe size.  The
following discussion applies to all RAID systems, not just to
.Nm .
.Pp
The
.Fx
block I/O system issues requests of between .5kB and 128 kB; a
typical mix is somewhere round 8 kB.  You can't stop any striping system from
breaking a request into two physical requests, and if you make the stripe small
enough, it can be broken into several.  This will result in a significant drop
in performance: the decrease in transfer time per disk is offset by the order of
magnitude greater increase in latency.
.Pp
With modern disk sizes and the
.Fx
I/O system, you can expect to have a
reasonably small number of fragmented requests with a stripe size between 256 kB
and 512 kB; with correct RAID implementations there is no obvious reason not to
increase the size to 2 or 4 MB on a large disk.
.Pp
When choosing a stripe size, consider that most current UFS file systems have
cylinder groups 32 MB in size.  If you have a stripe size and number of disks
both of which are a power of two, it is probable that all superblocks and inodes
will be placed on the same subdisk, which will impact performance significantly.
Choose an odd number instead, for example 479 kB.
.Pp
The easiest way to consider the impact of any transfer in a multi-access system
is to look at it from the point of view of the potential bottleneck, the disk
subsystem: how much total disk time does the transfer use?
Since just about
everything is cached, the time relationship between the request and its
completion is not so important: the important parameter is the total time that
the request keeps the disks active, the time when the disks are not available to
perform other transfers.  As a result, it doesn't really matter if the transfers
are happening at the same time or different times.  In practical terms, the time
we're looking at is the sum of the total latency (positioning time and
rotational latency, or the time it takes for the data to arrive under the disk
heads) and the total transfer time.  For a given transfer to disks of the same
speed, the transfer time depends only on the total size of the transfer.
.Pp
Consider a typical news article or web page of 24 kB, which will probably be
read in a single I/O.  Take disks with a transfer rate of 6 MB/s and an average
positioning time of 8 ms, and a file system with 4 kB blocks.  Since it's 24 kB,
we don't have to worry about fragments, so the file will start on a 4 kB
boundary.  The number of transfers required depends on where the block starts:
it's (S + F - 1) / S, where S is the stripe size in file system blocks, and F is
the file size in file system blocks.
.Bl -enum
.It
Stripe size of 4 kB.  You'll have 6 transfers.  Total subsystem load: 48 ms
latency, 2 ms transfer, 50 ms total.
.It
Stripe size of 8 kB.  On average, you'll have 3.5 transfers.  Total subsystem
load: 28 ms latency, 2 ms transfer, 30 ms total.
.It
Stripe size of 16 kB.  On average, you'll have 2.25 transfers.  Total subsystem
load: 18 ms latency, 2 ms transfer, 20 ms total.
.It
Stripe size of 256 kB.  On average, you'll have 1.08 transfers.  Total subsystem
load: 8.6 ms latency, 2 ms transfer, 10.6 ms total.
.It
Stripe size of 4 MB.  On average, you'll have 1.0009 transfers.  Total subsystem
load: 8.01 ms latency, 2 ms transfer, 10.01 ms total.
.El
.Pp
It appears that some hardware RAID systems have problems with large stripes:
they appear to always transfer a complete stripe to or from disk, so that a
large stripe size will have an adverse effect on performance.
The
.Nm
utility
does not suffer from this problem: it optimizes all disk transfers and does not
transfer unneeded data.
.Pp
Note that no well-known benchmark program tests true multi-access conditions
(more than 100 concurrent users), so it is difficult to demonstrate the validity
of these statements.
.Pp
Given these considerations, the following factors affect the performance of a
.Nm
volume:
.Bl -bullet
.It
Striping improves performance for multiple access only, since it increases the
chance of individual requests being on different drives.
.It
Concatenating UFS file systems across multiple drives can also improve
performance for multiple file access, since UFS divides a file system into
cylinder groups and attempts to keep files in a single cylinder group.  In
general, it is not as effective as striping.
.It
Mirroring can improve multi-access performance for reads, since by default
.Nm
issues consecutive reads to consecutive plexes.
.It
Mirroring decreases performance for all writes, whether multi-access or single
access, since the data must be written to both plexes.  This explains the
subdisk layout in the example of a mirroring configuration above: if the
corresponding subdisk in each plex is on a different physical disk, the write
commands can be issued in parallel, whereas if they are on the same physical
disk, they will be performed sequentially.
.It
RAID-5 reads have essentially the same considerations as striped reads, unless
the striped plex is part of a mirrored volume, in which case the performance of
the mirrored volume will be better.
.It
RAID-5 writes are approximately 25% of the speed of striped writes: to perform
the write,
.Nm
must first read the data block and the corresponding parity block, perform some
calculations and write back the parity block and the data block, four times as
many transfers as for writing a striped plex.  On the other hand, this is offset
by the cost of mirroring, so writes to a volume with a single RAID-5 plex are
approximately half the speed of writes to a correctly configured volume with two
striped plexes.
.It
When the
.Nm
configuration changes (for example, adding or removing objects, or the change of
state of one of the objects),
.Nm
writes up to 128 kB of updated configuration to each drive.  The larger the
number of drives, the longer this takes.
.El
.Ss Creating file systems on Vinum volumes
You do not need to run
.Xr disklabel 8
before creating a file system on a
.Nm
volume.  Just run
.Xr newfs 8 .
Use the
.Fl v
option to state that the device is not divided into partitions.  For example, to
create a file system on volume
.Pa mirror ,
enter the following command:
.Pp
.Dl "# newfs -v /dev/vinum/mirror"
.Pp
A number of other considerations apply to
.Nm
configuration:
.Bl -bullet
.It
There is no advantage in creating multiple drives on a single disk.  Each drive
uses 131.5 kB of data for label and configuration information, and performance
will suffer when the configuration changes.  Use appropriately sized subdisks instead.
.It
It is possible to increase the size of a concatenated
.Nm
plex, but currently the size of striped and RAID-5 plexes cannot be increased.
Currently the size of an existing UFS file system also cannot be increased, but
it is planned to make both plexes and file systems extensible.
.El
.Sh STATE MANAGEMENT
Vinum objects have the concept of
.Em state .
See
.Xr vinum 4
for more details.  They are only completely accessible if their state is
.Em up .
To change an object state to
.Em up ,
use the
.Ic start
command.  To change an object state to
.Em down ,
use the
.Ic stop
command.  Normally other states are created automatically by the relationship
between objects.  For example, if you add a plex to a volume, the subdisks of
the plex will be set in the
.Em empty
state, indicating that, though the hardware is accessible, the data on the
subdisk is invalid.  As a result of this state, the plex will be set in the
.Em faulty
state.
.Ss The `reviving' state
In many cases, when you start a subdisk the system must copy data to the
subdisk.  Depending on the size of the subdisk, this can take a long time.
During this time, the subdisk is set in the
.Em reviving
state.  On successful completion of the copy operation, it is automatically set
to the
.Em up
state.  It is possible for the process performing the revive to be stopped and
restarted.  The system keeps track of how far the subdisk has been revived, and
when the
.Ic start
command is reissued, the copying continues from this point.
.Pp
In order to maintain the consistency of a volume while one or more of its plexes
is being revived,
.Nm
writes to subdisks which have been revived up to the point of the write.  It may
also read from the plex if the area being read has already been revived.
.Sh GOTCHAS
The following points are not bugs, and they have good reasons for existing, but
they have shown to cause confusion.  Each is discussed in the appropriate
section above.
.Bl -enum
.It
.Nm
drives are
.Ux
disk partitions and must have the partition type
.Em vinum .
This is different from ccd, which expects partitions of type
.Em 4.2BSD .
This behaviour of
.Nm ccd
is an invitation to shoot yourself in the foot: with
.Nm ccd
you can easily overwrite a file system.
The
.Nm
utility will not permit this.
.Pp
For similar reasons, the
.Nm Ic start
command will not accept a drive on partition
.Dq Li c .
Partition
.Dq Li c
is used by the system to represent the whole disk, and must be of type
.Em unused .
Clearly there is a conflict here, which
.Nm
resolves by not using the
.Dq Li c
partition.
.It
When you create a volume with multiple plexes,
.Nm
does not automatically initialize the plexes.  This means that the contents are
not known, but they are certainly not consistent.  As a result, by default
.Nm
sets the state of all newly-created plexes except the first to
.Em faulty .
In order to synchronize them with the first plex, you must
.Ic start
them, which causes
.Nm
to copy the data from a plex which is in the
.Em up
state.  Depending on the size of the subdisks involved, this can take a long
time.
.Pp
In practice, people aren't too interested in what was in the plex when it was
created, and other volume managers cheat by setting them
.Em up
anyway.
The
.Nm
utility provides two ways to ensure that newly created plexes are
.Em up :
.Bl -bullet
.It
Create the plexes and then synchronize them with
.Nm Ic start .
.It
Create the volume (not the plex) with the keyword
.Cm setupstate ,
which tells
.Nm
to ignore any possible inconsistency and set the plexes to be
.Em up .
.El
.It
Some of the commands currently supported by
.Nm
are not really needed.  For reasons which I don't understand, however, I find
that users frequently try the
.Ic label
and
.Ic resetconfig
commands, though especially
.Ic resetconfig
outputs all sort of dire warnings.  Don't use these commands unless you have a
good reason to do so.
.It
Some state transitions are not very intuitive.  In fact, it's not clear whether
this is a bug or a feature.  If you find that you can't start an object in some
strange state, such as a
.Em reborn
subdisk, try first to get it into
.Em stopped
state, with the
.Ic stop
or
.Ic stop Fl f
commands.  If that works, you should then be able to start it.  If you find
that this is the only way to get out of a position where easier methods fail,
please report the situation.
.It
If you build the kernel module with the
.Fl D Ns Dv VINUMDEBUG
option, you must also build
.Nm
with the
.Fl D Ns Dv VINUMDEBUG
option, since the size of some data objects used by both components depends on
this option.  If you don't do so, commands will fail with a corresponding error
message.
.It
The
.Nm Ic read
command has a particularly emetic syntax.  Once it was the only way to start
.Nm ,
but now the preferred method is with
.Nm Ic start .
.Nm Ic read
should be used for maintenance purposes only.  Note that its syntax has changed,
and the arguments must be disk slices, such as
.Pa /dev/da0 ,
not partitions such as
.Pa /dev/da0e .
.El
.\"XXX.Sh BUGS
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /dev/vinum/control -compact
.It Pa /dev/vinum
directory with device nodes for
.Nm
objects
.It Pa /dev/vinum/control
control device for
.Nm
.It Pa /dev/vinum/plex
directory containing device nodes for
.Nm
plexes
.It Pa /dev/vinum/sd
directory containing device nodes for
.Nm
subdisks
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width VINUM_DATEFORMAT
.It Ev VINUM_HISTORY
The name of the log file, by default
.Pa /var/log/vinum_history .
.It Ev VINUM_DATEFORMAT
The format of dates in the log file, by default
.Qq Li %e %b %Y %H:%M:%S .
.It Ev EDITOR
The name of the editor to use for editing configuration files, by default
.Nm vi .
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr strftime 3 ,
.Xr vinum 4 ,
.Xr disklabel 8 ,
.Xr newfs 8
.Pp
.Pa http://www.vinumvm.org/vinum/ ,
.Pa http://www.vinumvm.org/vinum/how-to-debug.html .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Greg Lehey Aq grog@lemis.com
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
utility first appeared in
.Fx 3.0 .
The RAID-5 component of
.Nm
was developed for Cybernet Inc.\&
.Pq Pa www.cybernet.com
for its NetMAX product.