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 bool "Autodetect RAID arrays during kernel boot"
35 depends on BLK_DEV_MD=y
38 If you say Y here, then the kernel will try to autodetect raid
39 arrays as part of its boot process.
41 If you don't use raid and say Y, this autodetection can cause
42 a several-second delay in the boot time due to various
43 synchronisation steps that are part of this step.
48 tristate "Linear (append) mode"
51 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
52 use the so-called linear mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
53 partitions by simply appending one to the other.
55 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
56 will be called linear.
61 tristate "RAID-0 (striping) mode"
64 If you say Y here, then your multiple devices driver will be able to
65 use the so-called raid0 mode, i.e. it will combine the hard disk
66 partitions into one logical device in such a fashion as to fill them
67 up evenly, one chunk here and one chunk there. This will increase
68 the throughput rate if the partitions reside on distinct disks.
70 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
71 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
72 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
73 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
75 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module
81 tristate "RAID-1 (mirroring) mode"
84 A RAID-1 set consists of several disk drives which are exact copies
85 of each other. In the event of a mirror failure, the RAID driver
86 will continue to use the operational mirrors in the set, providing
87 an error free MD (multiple device) to the higher levels of the
88 kernel. In a set with N drives, the available space is the capacity
89 of a single drive, and the set protects against a failure of (N - 1)
92 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
93 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
94 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
95 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
97 If you want to use such a RAID-1 set, say Y. To compile this code
98 as a module, choose M here: the module will be called raid1.
103 tristate "RAID-10 (mirrored striping) mode (EXPERIMENTAL)"
104 depends on BLK_DEV_MD && EXPERIMENTAL
106 RAID-10 provides a combination of striping (RAID-0) and
107 mirroring (RAID-1) with easier configuration and more flexible
109 Unlike RAID-0, but like RAID-1, RAID-10 requires all devices to
110 be the same size (or at least, only as much as the smallest device
112 RAID-10 provides a variety of layouts that provide different levels
113 of redundancy and performance.
115 RAID-10 requires mdadm-1.7.0 or later, available at:
117 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
122 tristate "RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 mode"
123 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
128 A RAID-5 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive provides
129 the capacity of C * (N - 1) MB, and protects against a failure
130 of a single drive. For a given sector (row) number, (N - 1) drives
131 contain data sectors, and one drive contains the parity protection.
132 For a RAID-4 set, the parity blocks are present on a single drive,
133 while a RAID-5 set distributes the parity across the drives in one
134 of the available parity distribution methods.
136 A RAID-6 set of N drives with a capacity of C MB per drive
137 provides the capacity of C * (N - 2) MB, and protects
138 against a failure of any two drives. For a given sector
139 (row) number, (N - 2) drives contain data sectors, and two
140 drives contains two independent redundancy syndromes. Like
141 RAID-5, RAID-6 distributes the syndromes across the drives
142 in one of the available parity distribution methods.
144 Information about Software RAID on Linux is contained in the
145 Software-RAID mini-HOWTO, available from
146 <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. There you will also
147 learn where to get the supporting user space utilities raidtools.
149 If you want to use such a RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 set, say Y. To
150 compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module
151 will be called raid456.
155 config MD_RAID5_RESHAPE
156 bool "Support adding drives to a raid-5 array"
157 depends on MD_RAID456
160 A RAID-5 set can be expanded by adding extra drives. This
161 requires "restriping" the array which means (almost) every
162 block must be written to a different place.
164 This option allows such restriping to be done while the array
167 You will need mdadm version 2.4.1 or later to use this
168 feature safely. During the early stage of reshape there is
169 a critical section where live data is being over-written. A
170 crash during this time needs extra care for recovery. The
171 newer mdadm takes a copy of the data in the critical section
172 and will restore it, if necessary, after a crash.
174 The mdadm usage is e.g.
175 mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --raid-disks=6
176 to grow '/dev/md1' to having 6 disks.
178 Note: The array can only be expanded, not contracted.
179 There should be enough spares already present to make the new
188 tristate "Multipath I/O support"
189 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
191 Multipath-IO is the ability of certain devices to address the same
192 physical disk over multiple 'IO paths'. The code ensures that such
193 paths can be defined and handled at runtime, and ensures that a
194 transparent failover to the backup path(s) happens if a IO errors
195 arrives on the primary path.
200 tristate "Faulty test module for MD"
201 depends on BLK_DEV_MD
203 The "faulty" module allows for a block device that occasionally returns
204 read or write errors. It is useful for testing.
209 tristate "Device mapper support"
211 Device-mapper is a low level volume manager. It works by allowing
212 people to specify mappings for ranges of logical sectors. Various
213 mapping types are available, in addition people may write their own
214 modules containing custom mappings if they wish.
216 Higher level volume managers such as LVM2 use this driver.
218 To compile this as a module, choose M here: the module will be
224 boolean "Device mapper debugging support"
225 depends on BLK_DEV_DM
227 Enable this for messages that may help debug device-mapper problems.
232 tristate "Crypt target support"
233 depends on BLK_DEV_DM
237 This device-mapper target allows you to create a device that
238 transparently encrypts the data on it. You'll need to activate
239 the ciphers you're going to use in the cryptoapi configuration.
241 Information on how to use dm-crypt can be found on
243 <http://www.saout.de/misc/dm-crypt/>
245 To compile this code as a module, choose M here: the module will
251 tristate "Snapshot target"
252 depends on BLK_DEV_DM
254 Allow volume managers to take writable snapshots of a device.
257 tristate "Mirror target"
258 depends on BLK_DEV_DM
260 Allow volume managers to mirror logical volumes, also
261 needed for live data migration tools such as 'pvmove'.
264 tristate "Zero target"
265 depends on BLK_DEV_DM
267 A target that discards writes, and returns all zeroes for
268 reads. Useful in some recovery situations.
271 tristate "Multipath target"
272 depends on BLK_DEV_DM
273 # nasty syntax but means make DM_MULTIPATH independent
274 # of SCSI_DH if the latter isn't defined but if
275 # it is, DM_MULTIPATH must depend on it. We get a build
276 # error if SCSI_DH=m and DM_MULTIPATH=y
277 depends on SCSI_DH || !SCSI_DH
279 Allow volume managers to support multipath hardware.
282 tristate "I/O delaying target (EXPERIMENTAL)"
283 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
285 A target that delays reads and/or writes and can send
286 them to different devices. Useful for testing.
291 bool "DM uevents (EXPERIMENTAL)"
292 depends on BLK_DEV_DM && EXPERIMENTAL
294 Generate udev events for DM events.