With this patch, the intent to write to some block in the array can be logged
to a bitmap file. Each bit represents some number of sectors and is set
before any update happens, and only cleared when all writes relating to all
sectors are complete.
After an unclean shutdown, information in this bitmap can be used to optimise
resync - only sectors which could be out-of-sync need to be updated.
Also if a drive is removed and then added back into an array, the recovery can
make use of the bitmap to optimise reconstruction. This is not implemented in
this patch.
Currently the bitmap is stored in a file which must (obviously) be stored on a
separate device.
The patch only provided infrastructure. It does not update any personalities
to bitmap intent logging.
Md arrays can still be used with no bitmap file. This patch has minimal
impact on such arrays.
Signed-off-by: Neil Brown <neilb@cse.unsw.edu.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
NeilBrown