2 # Block device driver configuration
6 bool "Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)"
9 Support multiple physical spindles through a single logical device.
10 Required for RAID and logical volume management.
15 tristate "RAID support"
17 This driver lets you combine several hard disk partitions into one
18 logical block device. This can be used to simply append one
19 partition to another one or to combine several redundant hard disks
20 into a RAID1/4/5 device so as to provide protection against hard
21 disk failures. This is called "Software RAID" since the combining of
22 the partitions is done by the kernel. "Hardware RAID" means that the
23 combining is done by a dedicated controller; if you have such a
24 controller, you do not need to say Y here.
26 More information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
27 Software RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
28 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also learn
29 where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
34 tristate "Linear (append) mode"
37 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
38 use the so-called linear mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
39 partitions by simply appending one to the other.
41 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
42 will be called linear.
47 tristate "RAID-0 (striping) mode"
50 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
51 use the so-called raid0 mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
52 partitions into one logical device in such a fashion as to fill them
53 up evenly, one chunk here and one chunk there. This will increase
54 the throughput rate if the partitions reside on distinct disks.
56 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
57 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
58 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
59 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
61 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
67 tristate "RAID-1 (mirroring) mode"
70 A RAID-1 set consists of several disk drives which are exact copies
71 of each other. In the event of a mirror failure, the RAID driver
72 will continue to use the operational mirrors in the set, providing
73 an error free MD (multiple device) to the higher levels of the
74 kernel. In a set with N drives, the available space is the capacity
75 of a single drive, and the set protects against a failure of (N - 1)
78 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
79 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
80 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
81 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
83 If you want to use such a RAID-1 set, say Y. To compile this code
84 as a module, choose M here: the module will be called raid1.
89 tristate "RAID-10 (mirrored striping) mode (EXPERIMENTAL)"
90 depends on BLK_DEV_MD && EXPERIMENTAL
92 RAID-10 provides a combination of striping (RAID-0) and
93 mirroring (RAID-1) with easier configuration and more flexible
95 Unlike RAID-0, but like RAID-1, RAID-10 requires all devices to
96 be the same size (or at least, only as much as the smallest device
98 RAID-10 provides a variety of layouts that provide different levels
99 of redundancy and performance.
101 RAID-10 requires mdadm-1.7.0 or later, available at:
103 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
108 tristate "RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 mode"
109 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
113 A RAID-5 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive provides
114 the capacity of C * (N - 1) MB, and protects against a failure
115 of a single drive. For a given sector (row) number, (N - 1) drives
116 contain data sectors, and one drive contains the parity protection.
117 For a RAID-4 set, the parity blocks are present on a single drive,
118 while a RAID-5 set distributes the parity across the drives in one
119 of the available parity distribution methods.
121 A RAID-6 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive
122 provides the capacity of C * (N - 2) MB, and protects
123 against a failure of any two drives. For a given sector
124 (row) number, (N - 2) drives contain data sectors, and two
125 drives contains two independent redundancy syndromes. Like
126 RAID-5, RAID-6 distributes the syndromes across the drives
127 in one of the available parity distribution methods.
129 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
130 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
131 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
132 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
134 If you want to use such a RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 set, say Y. To
135 compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module
136 will be called raid456.
140 config MD_RAID5_RESHAPE
141 bool "Support adding drives to a raid-5 array"
142 depends on MD_RAID456
145 A RAID-5 set can be expanded by adding extra drives. This
146 requires "restriping" the array which means (almost) every
147 block must be written to a different place.
149 This option allows such restriping to be done while the array
152 You will need mdadm version 2.4.1 or later to use this
153 feature safely. During the early stage of reshape there is
154 a critical section where live data is being over-written. A
155 crash during this time needs extra care for recovery. The
156 newer mdadm takes a copy of the data in the critical section
157 and will restore it, if necessary, after a crash.
159 The mdadm usage is e.g.
160 mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --raid-disks=6
161 to grow '/dev/md1' to having 6 disks.
163 Note: The array can only be expanded, not contracted.
164 There should be enough spares already present to make the new
170 tristate "Multipath I/O support"
171 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
173 Multipath-IO is the ability of certain devices to address the same
174 physical disk over multiple 'IO paths'. The code ensures that such
175 paths can be defined and handled at runtime, and ensures that a
176 transparent failover to the backup path(s) happens if a IO errors
177 arrives on the primary path.
182 tristate "Faulty test module for MD"
183 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
185 The "faulty" module allows for a block device that occasionally returns
186 read or write errors. It is useful for testing.
191 tristate "Device mapper support"
193 Device-mapper is a low level volume manager. It works by allowing
194 people to specify mappings for ranges of logical sectors. Various
195 mapping types are available, in addition people may write their own
196 modules containing custom mappings if they wish.
198 Higher level volume managers such as LVM2 use this driver.
200 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module will be
206 boolean "Device mapper debugging support"
207 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
209 Enable this for messages that may help debug device-mapper problems.
214 tristate "Crypt target support"
215 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
219 This device-mapper target allows you to create a device that
220 transparently encrypts the data on it. You'll need to activate
221 the ciphers you're going to use in the cryptoapi configuration.
223 Information on how to use dm-crypt can be found on
225 <http://www.saout.de/misc/dm-crypt/>
227 To compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module will
233 tristate "Snapshot target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
234 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
236 Allow volume managers to take writable snapshots of a device.
239 tristate "Mirror target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
240 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
242 Allow volume managers to mirror logical volumes, also
243 needed for live data migration tools such as 'pvmove'.
246 tristate "Zero target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
247 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
249 A target that discards writes, and returns all zeroes for
250 reads. Useful in some recovery situations.
253 tristate "Multipath target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
254 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
256 Allow volume managers to support multipath hardware.
258 config DM_MULTIPATH_EMC
259 tristate "EMC CX/AX multipath support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
260 depends on DM_MULTIPATH && BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
262 Multipath support for EMC CX/AX series hardware.
264 config DM_MULTIPATH_RDAC
265 tristate "LSI/Engenio RDAC multipath support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
266 depends on DM_MULTIPATH && BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
268 Multipath support for LSI/Engenio RDAC.
271 tristate "I/O delaying target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
272 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
274 A target that delays reads and/or writes and can send
275 them to different devices. Useful for testing.