softraid(4) - RAID 5 Call for Testing

Joel Sing (jsing@) has put out a call for testing for RAID 5 on softraid(4):

For those not following source-changes@, I have just re-enabled the RAID 5 discipline for softraid(4).

During the last two hackathons in Dunedin, the RAID 5 implementation was largely rewritten. As far as I am aware, the last missing part was the lack of ability to resume a partial rebuild, which has been fixed - it now needs further testing and usage so that any remaining issues can be found.

Unfortunately I do not currently have access to my D2 disk array, which has limited the amount of testing that I can do - while the basics of creating and using a RAID 5 volume certainly help, the really useful testing also includes disk failures, rebuilds and partial rebuilds, along with data verification.

At this point I would probably trust it enough to put real data on it, however I cannot promise that no data eating bugs still exist - obviously real world usage should have real world backups (and probably far more frequently than normal).

If you do test and find problems, please report them either on this list or directly if you prefer. I would also be more than happy to hear of any successes (providing sufficient beating has been applied first!).

For those of you who've been champing at the bit for this, now's your chance! Do your best to lose your (test! test only!) data and report any and all issues to Mr. Sing.