VINUM (4) | Special files and drivers | Unix Manual Pages

VINUM (4) | Special files and drivers | Unix Manual Pages | :man▋

It provides device-independent logical disks, called volumes. Volumes are not restricted to the size of any disk on the system.
The volumes consist of one or more plexes, each of which contain the entire address space of a volume. This represents an implementation of RAID-1 (mirroring). Multiple plexes can also be used for:
- Increased read throughput. vinum will read data from the least active disk, so if a volume has plexes on multiple disks, more data can be read in parallel. vinum reads data from only one plex, but it writes data to all plexes.
- Increased reliability. By storing plexes on different disks, data will remain available even if one of the plexes becomes unavailable. In comparison with a RAID-5 plex (see below), using multiple plexes requires more storage space, but gives better performance, particularly in the case of a drive failure.
- Additional plexes can be used for on-line data reorganization. By attaching an additional plex and subsequently detaching one of the older plexes, data can be moved on-line without compromising access.
- An additional plex can be used to obtain a consistent dump of a file system. By attaching an additional plex and detaching at a specific time, the detached plex becomes an accurate snapshot of the file system at the time of detachment.
Each plex consists of one or more logical disk slices, called subdisks. Subdisks are defined as a contiguous block of physical disk storage. A plex may consist of any reasonable number of subdisks (in other words, the real limit is not the number, but other factors, such as memory and performance, associated with maintaining a large number of subdisks).
A number of mappings between subdisks and plexes are available:
- "Concatenated plexes" consist of one or more subdisks, each of which is mapped to a contiguous part of the plex address space.
- "Striped plexes" consist of two or more subdisks of equal size. The file address space is mapped in stripes, integral fractions of the subdisk size. Consecutive plex address space is mapped to stripes in each subdisk in turn. The subdisks of a striped plex must all be the same size.
- "RAID-5 plexes" require at least three equal-sized subdisks. They resemble striped plexes, except that in each stripe, one subdisk stores parity information. This subdisk changes in each stripe: in the first stripe, it is the first subdisk, in the second it is the second subdisk, etc. In the event of a single disk failure, vinum will recover the data based on the information stored on the remaining subdisks. This mapping is particularly suited to read-intensive access. The subdisks of a RAID-5 plex must all be the same size.
Drives are the lowest level of the storage hierarchy. They represent disk special devices.
vinum offers automatic startup. Unlike Unix file systems, vinum volumes contain all the configuration information needed to ensure that they are started correctly when the subsystem is enabled. This is also a significant advantage over the Veritas® File System. This feature regards the presence of the volumes. It does not mean that the volumes will be mounted automatically, since the standard startup procedures with /etc/fstab perform this function.

KERNEL CONFIGURATION

vinum is currently supplied as a KLD module, and does not require configuration. As with other KLDs, it is absolutely necessary to match the KLD to the version of the operating system. Failure to do so will cause vinum to issue an error message and terminate.

It is possible to configure vinum in the kernel, but this is not recommended. To do so, add this line to the kernel configuration file:

Debug Options

The current version of vinum, both the kernel module and the user program vinum(8), include significant debugging support. It is not recommended to remove this support at the moment, but if you do you must remove it from both the kernel and the user components. To do this, edit the files /usr/src/sbin/vinum/Makefile and /usr/src/sys/modules/vinum/Makefile and edit the CFLAGS variable to remove the -DVINUMDEBUG option. If you have configured vinum into the kernel, either specify the line

in the kernel configuration file or remove the -DVINUMDEBUG option from /usr/src/sbin/vinum/Makefile as described above.

If the VINUMDEBUG variables do not match, vinum(8) will fail with a message explaining the problem and what to do to correct it.

Make vinum automatically scan all available disks at attach time. This is a deprecated way that is primarily intended for environments that do not want to rely on kernel environment variables set by loader(8).

vinum was previously available in two versions: a freely available version which did not contain RAID-5 functionality, and a full version including RAID-5 functionality, which was available only from Cybernet Systems Inc. The present version of vinum includes the RAID-5 functionality.

RUNNING VINUM

vinum is part of the base
.Fx system. It does not require installation. To start it, start the vinum(8) program, which will load the KLD if it is not already present. Before using vinum, it must be configured. See vinum(8) for information on how to create a vinum configuration.

Normally, you start a configured version of vinum at boot time. Set the variable start_vinum in /etc/rc.conf to "YES" to start vinum at boot time. (See rc.conf(5) for more details.)

If vinum is loaded as a KLD (the recommended way), the vinum stop command will unload it (see vinum(8)). You can also do this with the kldunload(8) command.

The KLD can only be unloaded when idle, in other words when no volumes are mounted and no other instances of the vinum(8) program are active. Unloading the KLD does not harm the data in the volumes.

Configuring and Starting Objects

Use the vinum(8) utility to configure and start vinum objects.

AUTOMATIC STARTUP

The vinum subsystem can be automatically started at attach time. There are two kernel environment variables that can be set in loader.conf(5) to accomplish this.

vinum.autostart

If this variable is set (to any value), the attach function will attempt to scan all available disks for valid vinum configuration records. This is the preferred way if automatic startup is desired.

Example:

vinum.autostart= "YES"

vinum.drives

Alternatively, this variable can enumerate a list of disk devices to scan for configuration records. Note that only the "bare" device names need to be given, since vinum will automatically scan all possible slices and partitions.

Example:

vinum.drives= "da0 da1"

If automatic startup is used, it is not necessary to set the start_vinum variable of rc.conf(5). Note that if vinum is to supply to the volume for the root file system, it is necessary to start the subsystem early. This can be achieved by specifying

vinum_load= "YES"

in loader.conf(5).

IOCTL CALLS

ioctl(2) calls are intended for the use of the vinum(8) configuration program only. They are described in the header file /sys/dev/vinum/vinumio.h.

Disk Labels

Conventional disk special devices have a "disk label" in the second sector of the device. See disklabel(5) for more details. This disk label describes the layout of the partitions within the device. vinum does not subdivide volumes, so volumes do not contain a physical disk label. For convenience, vinum implements the ioctl calls DIOCGDINFO (get disk label), DIOCGPART (get partition information), DIOCWDINFO (write partition information) and DIOCSDINFO (set partition information). DIOCGDINFO and DIOCGPART refer to an internal representation of the disk label which is not present on the volume. As a result, the -r option of disklabel(8), which reads the ""raw disk"", will fail.

In general, disklabel(8) serves no useful purpose on a vinum volume. If you run it, it will show you three partitions, ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’, all the same except for the fstype, for example:
3 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
a:2048 0 4.2BSD1024 81920 # (Cyl. 0 - 0)
b:2048 0 swap # (Cyl. 0 - 0)
c:2048 0 unused 00 # (Cyl. 0 - 0)

vinum ignores the DIOCWDINFO and DIOCSDINFO ioctls, since there is nothing to change. As a result, any attempt to modify the disk label will be silently ignored.

MAKING FILE SYSTEMS

Since vinum volumes do not contain partitions, the names do not need to conform to the standard rules for naming disk partitions. For a physical disk partition, the last letter of the device name specifies the partition identifier (a to h). vinum volumes need not conform to this convention, but if they do not, newfs(8) will complain that it cannot determine the partition. To solve this problem, use the -v flag to newfs(8). For example, if you have a volume concat, use the following command to create a UFS file system on it:

"newfs -v /dev/vinum/concat"

OBJECT NAMING

vinum assigns default names to plexes and subdisks, although they may be overridden. We do not recommend overriding the default names. Experience with the Veritas® volume manager, which allows arbitrary naming of objects, has shown that this flexibility does not bring a significant advantage, and it can cause confusion.

Names may contain any non-blank character, but it is recommended to restrict them to letters, digits and the underscore characters. The names of volumes, plexes and subdisks may be up to 64 characters long, and the names of drives may up to 32 characters long. When choosing volume and plex names, bear in mind that automatically generated plex and subdisk names are longer than the name from which they are derived.

When vinum creates or deletes objects, it creates a directory /dev/vinum, in which it makes device entries for each volume it finds. It also creates subdirectories, /dev/vinum/plex and /dev/vinum/sd, in which it stores device entries for plexes and subdisks. In addition, it creates two more directories, /dev/vinum/vol and /dev/vinum/drive, in which it stores hierarchical information for volumes and drives.
In addition, vinum creates three super-devices, /dev/vinum/control, /dev/vinum/Control and /dev/vinum/controld. /dev/vinum/control is used by vinum(8) when it has been compiled without the VINUMDEBUG option, /dev/vinum/Control is used by vinum(8) when it has been compiled with the VINUMDEBUG option, and /dev/vinum/controld is used by the vinum daemon. The two control devices for vinum(8) are used to synchronize the debug status of kernel and user modules.
Unlike Unix drives, vinum volumes are not subdivided into partitions, and thus do not contain a disk label. Unfortunately, this confuses a number of utilities, notably newfs(8), which normally tries to interpret the last letter of a vinum volume name as a partition identifier. If you use a volume name which does not end in the letters ‘a’ to ‘c’, you must use the -v flag to newfs(8) in order to tell it to ignore this convention.
Plexes do not need to be assigned explicit names. By default, a plex name is the name of the volume followed by the letters .p and the number of the plex. For example, the plexes of volume vol3 are called vol3.p0, vol3.p1 and so on. These names can be overridden, but it is not recommended.
Like plexes, subdisks are assigned names automatically, and explicit naming is discouraged. A subdisk name is the name of the plex followed by the letters .s and a number identifying the subdisk. For example, the subdisks of plex vol3.p0 are called vol3.p0.s0, vol3.p0.s1 and so on.
By contrast, drives must be named. This makes it possible to move a drive to a different location and still recognize it automatically. Drive names may be up to 32 characters long.

Example

Assume the vinum objects described in the section "CONFIGURATION FILE" in vinum(8). The directory /dev/vinum looks like:
# ls -lR /dev/vinum
total 5
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 2 Mar 30 16:08 concat
brwx------ 1 root wheel 25, 0x40000000 Mar 30 16:08 control
brwx------ 1 root wheel 25, 0x40000001 Mar 30 16:08 controld
drwxrwxrwx 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 drive
drwxrwxrwx 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 plex
drwxrwxrwx 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 rvol
drwxrwxrwx 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 sd
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 3 Mar 30 16:08 strcon
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 1 Mar 30 16:08 stripe
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol
drwxrwxrwx 7 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 vol
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 4 Mar 30 16:08 vol5

/dev/vinum/drive:
total 0
brw-r----- 1 root operator 4, 15 Oct 21 16:51 drive2
brw-r----- 1 root operator 4, 31 Oct 21 16:51 drive4

/dev/vinum/plex:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10010002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10010003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000001 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000000 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10010004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1

/dev/vinum/sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0.s1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20010002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p1.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0.s1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20010003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20110003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1.s1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000001 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100001 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0.s1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000000 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100000 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0.s1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0.s1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20010004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20110004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1.s1

/dev/vinum/vol:
total 5
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 2 Mar 30 16:08 concat
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 concat.plex
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 3 Mar 30 16:08 strcon
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.plex
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 1 Mar 30 16:08 stripe
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.plex
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.plex
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 4 Mar 30 16:08 vol5
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.plex

/dev/vinum/vol/concat.plex:
total 2
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0.sd
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10010002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p1.sd

/dev/vinum/vol/concat.plex/concat.p0.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p0.s1

/dev/vinum/vol/concat.plex/concat.p1.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20010002 Mar 30 16:08 concat.p1.s0

/dev/vinum/vol/strcon.plex:
total 2
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0.sd
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10010003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1.sd

/dev/vinum/vol/strcon.plex/strcon.p0.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p0.s1

/dev/vinum/vol/strcon.plex/strcon.p1.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20010003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20110003 Mar 30 16:08 strcon.p1.s1

/dev/vinum/vol/stripe.plex:
total 1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000001 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0.sd

/dev/vinum/vol/stripe.plex/stripe.p0.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000001 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100001 Mar 30 16:08 stripe.p0.s1

/dev/vinum/vol/tinyvol.plex:
total 1
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000000 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0.sd

/dev/vinum/vol/tinyvol.plex/tinyvol.p0.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000000 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100000 Mar 30 16:08 tinyvol.p0.s1

/dev/vinum/vol/vol5.plex:
total 2
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10000004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0.sd
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x10010004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1.sd

/dev/vinum/vol/vol5.plex/vol5.p0.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20000004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20100004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p0.s1

/dev/vinum/vol/vol5.plex/vol5.p1.sd:
total 0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20010004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1.s0
brwxr-xr-- 1 root wheel 25, 0x20110004 Mar 30 16:08 vol5.p1.s1

In the case of unattached plexes and subdisks, the naming is reversed. Subdisks are named after the disk on which they are located, and plexes are named after the subdisk.
.Bf -symbolic This mapping is still to be determined.
.Ef

Object States

Each vinum object has a state associated with it. vinum uses this state to determine the handling of the object.

Volume States

Volumes may have the following states:

down	The volume is completely inaccessible.
up	The volume is up and at least partially functional. Not all plexes may be available.

"Plex States"

Plexes may have the following states:

referenced
	A plex entry which has been referenced as part of a volume, but which is currently not known.
faulty
	A plex which has gone completely down because of I/O errors.
down	A plex which has been taken down by the administrator.
initializing
	A plex which is being initialized.

The remaining states represent plexes which are at least partially up.

corrupt
	A plex entry which is at least partially up. Not all subdisks are available, and an inconsistency has occurred. If no other plex is uncorrupted, the volume is no longer consistent.
degraded
	A RAID-5 plex entry which is accessible, but one subdisk is down, requiring recovery for many I/O requests.
flaky	A plex which is really up, but which has a reborn subdisk which we do not completely trust, and which we do not want to read if we can avoid it.
up	A plex entry which is completely up. All subdisks are up.

"Subdisk States"

Subdisks can have the following states:

empty	A subdisk entry which has been created completely. All fields are correct, and the disk has been updated, but the on the disk is not valid.
referenced
	A subdisk entry which has been referenced as part of a plex, but which is currently not known.
initializing
	A subdisk entry which has been created completely and which is currently being initialized.

The following states represent invalid data.

obsolete
	A subdisk entry which has been created completely. All fields are correct, the config on disk has been updated, and the data was valid, but since then the drive has been taken down, and as a result updates have been missed.
stale	A subdisk entry which has been created completely. All fields are correct, the disk has been updated, and the data was valid, but since then the drive has been crashed and updates have been lost.

The following states represent valid, inaccessible data.

crashed
	A subdisk entry which has been created completely. All fields are correct, the disk has been updated, and the data was valid, but since then the drive has gone down. No attempt has been made to write to the subdisk since the crash, so the data is valid.
down	A subdisk entry which was up, which contained valid data, and which was taken down by the administrator. The data is valid.
reviving
	The subdisk is currently in the process of being revived. We can write but not read.

The following states represent accessible subdisks with valid data.

reborn
	A subdisk entry which has been created completely. All fields are correct, the disk has been updated, and the data was valid, but since then the drive has gone down and up again. No updates were lost, but it is possible that the subdisk has been damaged. We will not read from this subdisk if we have a choice. If this is the only subdisk which covers this address space in the plex, we set its state to up under these circumstances, so this status implies that there is another subdisk to fulfill the request.
up	A subdisk entry which has been created completely. All fields are correct, the disk has been updated, and the data is valid.

"Drive States"

Drives can have the following states:

referenced
	At least one subdisk refers to the drive, but it is not currently accessible to the system. No device name is known.
down	The drive is not accessible.
up	The drive is up and running.

HISTORY

AUTHORS

BUGS

DEBUGGING PROBLEMS WITH VINUM

Configuration problems

dd(1)

Kernel Panics

gdb(1): gdb(1) ddb(4) vinum(8):

Reporting Problems with Vinum

vinum(8)).

Created by Blin Media, 2008-2013

NAME

CONTENTS

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION