NetBSD Problem Report #37012

From martin@duskware.de  Fri Sep 21 07:37:58 2007
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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:48:25 +0000 (UTC)
From: cross+netbsd@distal.com
Reply-To: cross+netbsd@distal.com
To: netbsd-bugs-owner@NetBSD.org
Subject: The online instructions for setting up RAIDframe aren't as clear as would be good
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>Number:         37012
>Category:       install
>Synopsis:       The online instructions for setting up RAIDframe aren't as clear as would be good
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    install-manager
>State:          feedback
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Sep 21 07:40:00 +0000 2007
>Closed-Date:    
>Last-Modified:  Sat Jul 24 16:17:19 +0000 2021
>Originator:     Chris Ross
>Release:        4.0_RC1
>Organization:
>Environment:
N/A
>Description:
Re:  http://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rf.html

The documentation for setting up RAIDframe "feels" out-of-date.  I'm told that little has changed with RAIDframe recently, but the document clearly has the feeling of a document that was written for NetBSD 1.x, and has been "updated" to 2.0 (and/or later).  It doesn't flow well for someone setting up RAIDframe on any recent release of NetBSD.

The above is a general statement.  The specific purpose of this P/R is to note the lack of clarity in the dc(1) magic that's prescribed for configuring the underlying disks to accept crash dumps (in section 15.3.7).

The first time I did this, I didn't understand where all of these numbers came from.  I would suggest:

1) Using bold-facing or some other presentation characteristic, at least in the non-text versions, to indicate which lines are inputs to dc, and which are output from dc.
2) Use italics, or some other indication, to note that the magical "1008" used in the sparc64 fomulae needs to be drawn from the specific disk you're dealing with in each case.  This *is* mentioned above, but little point is made of it, and when cutting-and-pasting from the dc(1) input, it is easy to lose that piece of information.

Much of this is presentation issue, but.
>How-To-Repeat:
Read the documentation in section 15.3.7, and try to configure a RAIDframe for booting (and accepting crash-dumps) on a sparc64.  If you don't already know the process well, you will likely be tripped up in a few places.
>Fix:

>Release-Note:

>Audit-Trail:
From: Martin Husemann <martin@duskware.de>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: install/37012: The online instructions for setting up RAIDframe aren't as clear as would be good
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:55:02 +0200

 Slightly unrelated note: I think the real solution would be to get rid of
 the necessarity to do all this dc magic at all.

 I could imagine some /etc/rc.d/* magic (and if needed some dkctl/swapctl
 enhancements) that

  - check the physical position of the swap-on-raid partition
  - do the necessary calculations and create a wedge that maps this
    to the first underlying disk device
  - use swapctl -D to define this wedge as dump device

 But this needs more discussion and thoughts...

 Martin

State-Changed-From-To: open->feedback
State-Changed-By: oster@NetBSD.org
State-Changed-When: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 16:17:19 +0000
State-Changed-Why:
Dumps have been automatically supported for quite some time now to the swap 
partition on a RAID 1 set.  I suspect the online RAID docs have also changed
since this PR was filed.  Is there anything remaining to be done on this PR?
Thanks.


>Unformatted:

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