Replying to David Woodhouse:
RAID is just a hack which hides the redundancy from the file system;
the
kind of thing we always used to have to do for DOS compatibility so that
we could provide an INT 13h handler and have it 'just work'. It's much
the same reasoning which led to the built-in 'translation layers' on
cheap CF cards and USB sticks which so often eat your data and which
have a tendency to use up their limited lifetime in copying obsolete
sectors belonging to deleted files around on the underlying medium.
We don't _need_ that kind of layering in Linux. Have a library of
functions which can be used for such redundancy, by all means -- but
don't just make RAID pretend to be a 'standard' block device and prevent
all possibility of sharing knowledge between the file system and the
layer providing the redundancy. That's just insane.
Well, everything you said habove is correct. But I've yet seen any
"redundant block device filesystem" project anywhere.
Anybody willing to start it?
Meanwhile, maybe we can fix md sync ordering? :)))
--
Paul P 'Stingray' Komkoff Jr //
http://stingr.net/key <- my pgp key
This message represents the official view of the voices in my head