geom/mirror/gmirror.8

.\" Copyright (c) 2004-2009 Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>
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.Dd October 5, 2022
.Dt GMIRROR 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm gmirror
.Nd "control utility for mirrored devices"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
To compile GEOM_MIRROR into your kernel, add the following lines to your
kernel configuration file:
.Bd -ragged -offset indent
.Cd "options GEOM_MIRROR"
.Ed
.Pp
Alternatively, to load the GEOM_MIRROR module at boot time, add the following
line to your
.Xr loader.conf 5 :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
geom_mirror_load="YES"
.Ed
.Pp
.No Usage of the Nm
utility:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm label
.Op Fl Fhnv
.Op Fl b Ar balance
.Op Fl s Ar slice
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm clear
.Op Fl v
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm create
.Op Fl Fnv
.Op Fl b Ar balance
.Op Fl s Ar slice
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm configure
.Op Fl adfFhnv
.Op Fl b Ar balance
.Op Fl s Ar slice
.Ar name
.Nm
.Cm configure
.Op Fl v
.Fl p Ar priority
.Ar name
.Ar prov
.Nm
.Cm rebuild
.Op Fl v
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm resize
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl s Ar size
.Ar name
.Nm
.Cm insert
.Op Fl hiv
.Op Fl p Ar priority
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm remove
.Op Fl v
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm activate
.Op Fl v
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm deactivate
.Op Fl v
.Ar name
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm destroy
.Op Fl fv
.Ar name ...
.Nm
.Cm forget
.Op Fl v
.Ar name ...
.Nm
.Cm stop
.Op Fl fv
.Ar name ...
.Nm
.Cm dump
.Ar prov ...
.Nm
.Cm list
.Nm
.Cm status
.Nm
.Cm load
.Nm
.Cm unload
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility is used for mirror (RAID1) configurations.
After a mirror's creation, all components are detected and configured
automatically.
All operations like failure detection, stale component detection, rebuild
of stale components, etc.\& are also done automatically.
The
.Nm
utility uses on-disk metadata (stored in the provider's last sector) to store all needed
information.
Since the last sector is used for this purpose, it is possible to place a root
file system on a mirror.
.Pp
The first argument to
.Nm
indicates an action to be performed:
.Bl -tag -width ".Cm deactivate"
.It Cm label
Create a mirror.
The order of components is important, because a component's priority is based on its position
(starting from 0 to 255).
The component with the biggest priority is used by the
.Cm prefer
balance algorithm
and is also used as a master component when resynchronization is needed,
e.g.\& after a power failure when the device was open for writing.
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl b Ar balance"
.It Fl b Ar balance
Specifies balance algorithm to use, one of:
.Bl -tag -width ".Cm round-robin"
.It Cm load
Read from the component with the lowest load.
This is the default balance algorithm.
.It Cm prefer
Read from the component with the biggest priority.
.It Cm round-robin
Use round-robin algorithm when choosing component to read.
.It Cm split
Split read requests, which are bigger than or equal to slice size on N pieces,
where N is the number of active components.
.El
.It Fl F
Do not synchronize after a power failure or system crash.
Assumes device is in consistent state.
.It Fl h
Hardcode providers' names in metadata.
.It Fl n
Turn off autosynchronization of stale components.
.It Fl s Ar slice
When using the
.Cm split
balance algorithm and an I/O READ request is bigger than or equal to this value,
the I/O request will be split into N pieces, where N is the number of active
components.
Defaults to 4096 bytes.
.El
.It Cm clear
Clear metadata on the given providers.
.It Cm create
Similar to
.Cm label ,
but creates mirror without storing on-disk metadata in last sector.
This special "manual" operation mode assumes some external control to manage
mirror detection after reboot, device hot-plug and other external events.
.It Cm configure
Configure the given device.
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl p Ar priority"
.It Fl a
Turn on autosynchronization of stale components.
.It Fl b Ar balance
Specifies balance algorithm to use.
.It Fl d
Do not hardcode providers' names in metadata.
.It Fl f
Synchronize device after a power failure or system crash.
.It Fl F
Do not synchronize after a power failure or system crash.
Assumes device is in consistent state.
.It Fl h
Hardcode providers' names in metadata.
.It Fl n
Turn off autosynchronization of stale components.
.It Fl p Ar priority
Specifies priority for the given component
.Ar prov .
.It Fl s Ar slice
Specifies slice size for
.Cm split
balance algorithm.
.El
.It Cm rebuild
Rebuild the given mirror components forcibly.
If autosynchronization was not turned off for the given device, this command
should be unnecessary.
.It Cm resize
Change the size of the given mirror.
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl s Ar size"
.It Fl s Ar size
New size of the mirror is expressed in logical block numbers.
This option can be omitted, then it will be automatically calculated to
maximum available size.
.El
.It Cm insert
Add the given component(s) to the existing mirror.
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl p Ar priority"
.It Fl h
Hardcode providers' names in metadata.
.It Fl i
Mark component(s) as inactive immediately after insertion.
.It Fl p Ar priority
Specifies priority of the given component(s).
.El
.It Cm remove
Remove the given component(s) from the mirror and clear metadata on it.
.It Cm activate
Activate the given component(s), which were marked as inactive before.
.It Cm deactivate
Mark the given component(s) as inactive, so it will not be automatically
connected to the mirror.
.It Cm destroy
Stop the given mirror and clear metadata on all its components.
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl f"
.It Fl f
Stop the given mirror even if it is opened.
.El
.It Cm forget
Forget about components which are not connected.
This command is useful when a disk has failed and cannot be reconnected, preventing the
.Cm remove
command from being used to remove it.
.It Cm stop
Stop the given mirror.
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl f"
.It Fl f
Stop the given mirror even if it is opened.
.El
.It Cm dump
Dump metadata stored on the given providers.
.It Cm list
See
.Xr geom 8 .
.It Cm status
See
.Xr geom 8 .
.It Cm load
See
.Xr geom 8 .
.It Cm unload
See
.Xr geom 8 .
.El
.Pp
Additional options include:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl v"
.It Fl v
Be more verbose.
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
Exit status is 0 on success, and 1 if the command fails.
.Sh EXAMPLES
Use 3 disks to setup a mirror.
Choose split balance algorithm, split only
requests which are bigger than or equal to 2kB.
Create file system,
mount it, then unmount it and stop device:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror label -v -b split -s 2048 data da0 da1 da2
newfs /dev/mirror/data
mount /dev/mirror/data /mnt
\&...
umount /mnt
gmirror stop data
gmirror unload
.Ed
.Pp
Create a mirror on disk with valid data (note that the last sector of the disk
will be overwritten).
Add another disk to this mirror,
so it will be synchronized with existing disk:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror label -v -b round-robin data da0
gmirror insert data da1
.Ed
.Pp
Create a mirror, but do not use automatic synchronization feature.
Add another disk and rebuild it:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror label -v -n -b load data da0 da1
gmirror insert data da2
gmirror rebuild data da2
.Ed
.Pp
One disk failed.
Replace it with a brand new one:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror forget data
gmirror insert data da1
.Ed
.Pp
Create a mirror, deactivate one component, do the backup and connect it again.
It will not be resynchronized, if there is no need to do so (there were no writes in
the meantime):
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror label data da0 da1
gmirror deactivate data da1
dd if=/dev/da1 of=/backup/data.img bs=1m
gmirror activate data da1
.Ed
.Sh SYSCTL VARIABLES
The following
.Xr sysctl 8
variables can be used to configure behavior for all mirrors.
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Va kern.geom.mirror.debug
Control the verbosity of kernel logging related to mirrors.
A value larger than 0 will enable debug logging.
.It Va kern.geom.mirror.timeout
The amount of time, in seconds, to wait for all copies of a mirror to
appear before starting the mirror.
Disks that appear after the mirror has been started are not automatically
added to the mirror.
.It Va kern.geom.mirror.idletime
The amount of time, in seconds, which must elapse after the last write to
a mirror before that mirror is marked clean.
Clean mirrors do not need to be synchronized after a power failure or
system crash.
A small value may result in frequent overwrites of the disks' metadata
sectors, and thus may reduce the longevity of the disks.
.It Va kern.geom.mirror.disconnect_on_failure
Determine whether a disk is automatically removed from its mirror when an
I/O request to that disk fails.
.It Va kern.geom.mirror.sync_requests
The number of parallel I/O requests used while synchronizing a mirror.
This parameter may only be configured as a
.Xr loader.conf 5
tunable.
.It Va kern.geom.mirror.sync_update_period
The period, in seconds, at which a synchronizing mirror's metadata is
updated.
Periodic updates are used to record a synchronization's progress so that
an interrupted synchronization may be resumed starting at the recorded
offset, rather than at the beginning.
A smaller value results in more accurate progress tracking, but also
increases the number of non-sequential writes to the disk being synchronized.
If the sysctl value is 0, no updates are performed until the synchronization
is complete.
.El
.Sh NOTES
Doing kernel dumps to
.Nm
providers is possible, but some conditions have to be met.
First of all, a kernel dump will go only to one component and
.Nm
always chooses the component with the highest priority.
Reading a dump from the mirror on boot will only work if the
.Cm prefer
balance algorithm is used (that way
.Nm
will read only from the component with the highest priority).
If you use a different balance algorithm, you should create an
.Xr rc 8
script that sets the balance algorithm to
.Cm prefer ,
for example with the following command:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror configure -b prefer data
.Ed
.Pp
Make sure that
.Xr rcorder 8
schedules the new script before
.Xr savecore 8 .
The desired balance algorithm can be restored later on
by placing the following command in
.Xr rc.local 8 :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
gmirror configure -b round-robin data
.Ed
.Pp
The decision which component to choose for dumping is made when
.Xr dumpon 8
is called.
If on the next boot a component with a higher priority will be available,
the prefer algorithm will choose to read from it and
.Xr savecore 8
will find nothing.
If on the next boot a component with the highest priority will be synchronized,
the prefer balance algorithm will read from the next one, thus will find nothing
there.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr geom 4 ,
.Xr dumpon 8 ,
.Xr geom 8 ,
.Xr gvinum 8 ,
.Xr mount 8 ,
.Xr newfs 8 ,
.Xr savecore 8 ,
.Xr sysctl 8 ,
.Xr umount 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
utility appeared in
.Fx 5.3 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Pawel Jakub Dawidek Aq Mt pjd@FreeBSD.org
.Sh BUGS
There should be a way to change a component's priority inside a running mirror.
.Pp
There should be a section with an implementation description.