Is LVM dead ?
I see very strange situation with lvm now.
And it is really strange for me.
Ok, I signed petition, there are far too many efforts to include lvm into kernel. And it was included. And that was the last news item at lvm website! There are too many bugs in lvmtools, many of them already found/reported. There are far too many headaches to build lvm with new kernels. There are too many patches floating around. And the latest file date is about march-2000... It seemed to be that folks has have only one target -- to include lvm into kernel. To set up a dots under i's. And that was a final plan. Again, when IBM comes with their ideas (not to say here good or bad -- it is a different story), people here just said something like "we already have all that we want, so go out"... (discussion was long and interesting, but primary authors was not involved there).
What's happening? I'm really worried, as this is a very useful thing. And I call here -- should someone become a new maintainer of the whole thing ? :((( As current maintainer as it seemed to be just did all that he want already...
I'm sorry, I'm really very sorry for this all if I'm wrong. This is just my impression, nothing more. And I apologize, really, if I'm wrong.
But -- who can demonstrate that I'm wrong ??? :(((((((((
Regards,
Michael.
Michael,
as mentioned on this list a couple of days ago, LVM 0.9 is going to be released early november.
It will for eg. contain persistent and resizable snapshots.
If you have any feature enhancements, bug fixes or code to supply, Please feel free to discuss them on this list.
Quoted 17 lines · Michael Tokarev
I see very strange situation with lvm now.
And it is really strange for me.Ok, I signed petition, there are far too many efforts to include lvm into kernel. And it was included. And that was the last news item at lvm website! There are too many bugs in lvmtools, many of them already found/reported. There are far too many headaches to build lvm with new kernels. There are too many patches floating around. And the latest file date is about march-2000... It seemed to be that folks has have only one target -- to include lvm into kernel. To set up a dots under i's. And that was a final plan. Again, when IBM comes with their ideas (not to say here good or bad -- it is a different story), people here just said something like "we already have all that we want, so go out"... (discussion was long and interesting, but primary authors was not involved there).
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What's happening?
Code is beeing developed, features are beeing implemented etc.
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I'm really worried, as this is a very
useful thing. And I call here -- should someone become a new maintainer of the whole thing ? :((( As current maintainer as it seemed to be just did all that he want already...
Did you actually read the documentaion (TODO)?
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I'm sorry, I'm really very sorry for this all if I'm wrong. This is just my impression, nothing more. And I apologize, really, if I'm wrong.
You should.
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But -- who can demonstrate that I'm wrong ??? :(((((((((
Hopefully i was.
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Regards,
Michael.
Signature · 12 lines
Regards,
Heinz -- The LVM guy --
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Heinz Mauelshagen Sistina Software Inc.
Senior Consultant/Developer Bartningstr. 12
64289 Darmstadt
Germany
[email protected] +49 6151 7103 86
FAX 7103 96
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Quoted 4 lines · Heinz Mauelshagen
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What's happening?
Code is beeing developed, features are beeing implemented etc.
Perhaps it would be useful if you could do an interim 0.8 mainteance release, with e.g. all the simple bugfixes Andreas Dilger has collected (segfaults etc.) There are unfortunately a few annoying bugs in the stock 0.8 userland, which people rediscover and rereport all the time.
-Andi
Quoted 3 lines · Andi Kleen
Perhaps it would be useful if you could do an interim 0.8 mainteance release, with e.g. all the simple bugfixes Andreas Dilger has collected (segfaults etc.).
i second this. possibly Heinz as the main developer is currently very deep into the cool new stuff of his upcoming v0.9, and so working on 0.8 isn't very attractive to him.
however, for users, 0.8 is what we have and it's become very difficult to keep track of all the different patches/fixes. (least it would be if it wasn't for andreas).
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There are unfortunately a few annoying bugs in the stock 0.8 userland, which people rediscover and rereport all the time.
also, there are people who'd love to try LVM out on bigger machines than home servers and laptops. but who need to convince a boss first. a clean install process makes that latter part a lot easier.
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-Andi
--paulj
Quoted 4 lines · Andi Kleen
Perhaps it would be useful if you could do an interim 0.8 mainteance release, with e.g. all the simple bugfixes Andreas Dilger has collected (segfaults etc.) There are unfortunately a few annoying bugs in the stock 0.8 userland, which people rediscover and rereport all the time.
Actually I think Andreas could do the interim releases (if he wants to). There is nothing wrong with having one maintainer for the development tree and one for the stable tree. Andreas already has a .rpm with all the known bugfixes, all we need now, is a tarball of that stuff.
And the 0.8 userlevel tools will be important: The 0.9 kernel changes are probably fairly huge, so Linus may not include them in 2.4. That means we need stable 0.8 tools for 2.4.
Jan
Quoted 10 lines · Jan Niehusmann
Quoted 4 lines · Andi Kleen
Perhaps it would be useful if you could do an interim 0.8 mainteance release, with e.g. all the simple bugfixes Andreas Dilger has collected (segfaults etc.) There are unfortunately a few annoying bugs in the stock 0.8 userland, which people rediscover and rereport all the time.
Actually I think Andreas could do the interim releases (if he wants to). There is nothing wrong with having one maintainer for the development tree and one for the stable tree. Andreas already has a .rpm with all the known bugfixes, all we need now, is a tarball of that stuff.
If you don't have the rpm tool (which can also be installed on a Debian system), you could also use alien to get the .tgz out of the .rpm file. If Heinz agrees to link my archives from the LVM site, then I will even make a separate patched .tgz available along with the .rpm.
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And the 0.8 userlevel tools will be important: The 0.9 kernel changes are probably fairly huge, so Linus may not include them in 2.4. That means we need stable 0.8 tools for 2.4.
The one thing that needs to happen for my userland tools to work is to patch the 2.4 kernel lvm.h to allow being used from kernel and user space. I doubt that Linus would accept a patch from me on this, so it would need to go through Heinz. The total number of real changes is very small compared to the 2.4 kernel header, but there are a lot of variable types that change to be compatible with both user and kernel includes, and a bunch of format changes.
Cheers, Andreas
Signature · 3 lines
Andreas Dilger \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
\ would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ -- DogbertQuoted 5 lines · Heinz Mauelshagen
Michael,
as mentioned on this list a couple of days ago, LVM 0.9 is going to be released early november.
I follow this list for about a year now. There was some references last month to 0.9, two of them was yours. But that 0.9 is like a cloud that maybe here or maybe not. In contrast, demands for bugfixes are high for some months already. Most important for many users are bugfixes -- with current features lvm already very useful, but probably not so useful with bugs and great features. I say here about already well-known bugs that are serious enouth. Can someone count how many people debugged existing bugs that was already fixed in some 0.9 code? :( Look to list: there is a loop like:
can someone point me to lvm for kernel 2.2.15 (2.2.16, 2.2.17,...)?
-- yes, it is there and there
-- thanks
oh, there is a bug in lvm there and there. Here is a patch.
-- yes, it is a known bug, patch already there and there and there.
oh, there is another bug, patch included.
-- yes, it is also a known bug, patch can be found...
And so on. Most people just stuck on applying kernel patches, as current kernel is different compared to 2.2.13 one...
Great thanks to Andeas Dilger who maintains his version of all needed stuff -- I'm shure that this work saved a lot of the above cycles.
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It will for eg. contain persistent and resizable snapshots.
If you have any feature enhancements, bug fixes or code to supply, Please feel free to discuss them on this list.
What really needed is a collection of all patches or, preferrably, one (maybe inetrim) release, with a point to it from linux.msede.com/lvm.
[my flaws skipped]
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I'm sorry, I'm really very sorry for this all if I'm wrong. This is just my impression, nothing more. And I apologize, really, if I'm wrong.
You should.
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But -- who can demonstrate that I'm wrong ??? :(((((((((
Hopefully i was.
Ok. I greatly apologize, Heinz! Excuse me please.
But you should agree that from "outside" view things _may_ looks like I described. I has some talks with my friends today, and some of them have the same impressions... And look -- situation is trivial to reslove, and many people will be glad to help.
Also I'm shure that someone will be glad/interested to help with 0.9 release implementation...
Again, Excuse me please, Heinz and all!
Regards,
Michael.
Quoted 3 lines · Michael
There are too many patches floating around. And the latest file date is about march-2000... It seemed to be that folks has have only one target -- to include lvm into kernel. To set up a dots under i's.
I agree that there should be more visible interim releases of LVM user tools. The kernel code is now part of 2.4, so it doesn't make sense to make 2.4 kernel patches available anywhere else. It may be that we can get LVM 0.8 into the 2.2 kernel - I don't know if anyone has tried yet. In any case, I will continue to keep the 2.2 code up to date.
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Again, when IBM comes with their ideas (not to say here good or bad -- it is a different story), people here just said something like "we already have all that we want, so go out"... (discussion was long and interesting, but primary authors was not involved there).
What's happening? I'm really worried, as this is a very useful thing. And I call here -- should someone become a new maintainer of the whole thing ? :((( As current maintainer as it seemed to be just did all that he want already...
Actually, just to let you know what is happening, a lot of people interested in LVM got together in Miami for the Storage Workshop (Heinz was one of the organizers there), and talked about future LVM development. IBM was there, as well as a number of kernel developers, Heinz, myself (for TurboLinux), LinuxCare, etc. It may not be visible that things are going on, but they are. I'm sure there will be more information available here when it is more than just talk.
Cheers, Andreas
Signature · 3 lines
Andreas Dilger \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
\ would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ -- Dogbert