[PATCH] md: document sysfs usage of md, and make a couple of small refinements
Document in Documentation/md.txt the files that now appear in sysfs, and make
a couple of small refinements to exactly when 'level' and 'raid_disks' are
empty, to make it match the documentation.
Signed-off-by: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/Documentation/md.txt b/Documentation/md.txt
index e2b5369..23e6cce 100644
--- a/Documentation/md.txt
+++ b/Documentation/md.txt
@@ -116,3 +116,122 @@
Once started with RUN_ARRAY, uninitialized spares can be added with
HOT_ADD_DISK.
+
+
+
+MD devices in sysfs
+-------------------
+md devices appear in sysfs (/sys) as regular block devices,
+e.g.
+ /sys/block/md0
+
+Each 'md' device will contain a subdirectory called 'md' which
+contains further md-specific information about the device.
+
+All md devices contain:
+ level
+ a text file indicating the 'raid level'. This may be a standard
+ numerical level prefixed by "RAID-" - e.g. "RAID-5", or some
+ other name such as "linear" or "multipath".
+ If no raid level has been set yet (array is still being
+ assembled), this file will be empty.
+
+ raid_disks
+ a text file with a simple number indicating the number of devices
+ in a fully functional array. If this is not yet known, the file
+ will be empty. If an array is being resized (not currently
+ possible) this will contain the larger of the old and new sizes.
+
+As component devices are added to an md array, they appear in the 'md'
+directory as new directories named
+ dev-XXX
+where XXX is a name that the kernel knows for the device, e.g. hdb1.
+Each directory contains:
+
+ block
+ a symlink to the block device in /sys/block, e.g.
+ /sys/block/md0/md/dev-hdb1/block -> ../../../../block/hdb/hdb1
+
+ super
+ A file containing an image of the superblock read from, or
+ written to, that device.
+
+ state
+ A file recording the current state of the device in the array
+ which can be a comma separated list of
+ faulty - device has been kicked from active use due to
+ a detected fault
+ in_sync - device is a fully in-sync member of the array
+ spare - device is working, but not a full member.
+ This includes spares that are in the process
+ of being recoverred to
+ This list make grow in future.
+
+
+An active md device will also contain and entry for each active device
+in the array. These are named
+
+ rdNN
+
+where 'NN' is the possition in the array, starting from 0.
+So for a 3 drive array there will be rd0, rd1, rd2.
+These are symbolic links to the appropriate 'dev-XXX' entry.
+Thus, for example,
+ cat /sys/block/md*/md/rd*/state
+will show 'in_sync' on every line.
+
+
+
+Active md devices for levels that support data redundancy (1,4,5,6)
+also have
+
+ sync_action
+ a text file that can be used to monitor and control the rebuild
+ process. It contains one word which can be one of:
+ resync - redundancy is being recalculated after unclean
+ shutdown or creation
+ recover - a hot spare is being built to replace a
+ failed/missing device
+ idle - nothing is happening
+ check - A full check of redundancy was requested and is
+ happening. This reads all block and checks
+ them. A repair may also happen for some raid
+ levels.
+ repair - A full check and repair is happening. This is
+ similar to 'resync', but was requested by the
+ user, and the write-intent bitmap is NOT used to
+ optimise the process.
+
+ This file is writable, and each of the strings that could be
+ read are meaningful for writing.
+
+ 'idle' will stop an active resync/recovery etc. There is no
+ guarantee that another resync/recovery may not be automatically
+ started again, though some event will be needed to trigger
+ this.
+ 'resync' or 'recovery' can be used to restart the
+ corresponding operation if it was stopped with 'idle'.
+ 'check' and 'repair' will start the appropriate process
+ providing the current state is 'idle'.
+
+ mismatch_count
+ When performing 'check' and 'repair', and possibly when
+ performing 'resync', md will count the number of errors that are
+ found. The count in 'mismatch_cnt' is the number of sectors
+ that were re-written, or (for 'check') would have been
+ re-written. As most raid levels work in units of pages rather
+ than sectors, this my be larger than the number of actual errors
+ by a factor of the number of sectors in a page.
+
+Each active md device may also have attributes specific to the
+personality module that manages it.
+These are specific to the implementation of the module and could
+change substantially if the implementation changes.
+
+These currently include
+
+ stripe_cache_size (currently raid5 only)
+ number of entries in the stripe cache. This is writable, but
+ there are upper and lower limits (32768, 16). Default is 128.
+ strip_cache_active (currently raid5 only)
+ number of active entries in the stripe cache