mdmon.8

.\" See file COPYING in distribution for details.
.TH MDMON 8 "" v3.3.1
.SH NAME
mdmon \- monitor MD external metadata arrays

.SH SYNOPSIS

.BI mdmon " [--all] [--takeover] [--foreground] CONTAINER"

.SH OVERVIEW
The 2.6.27 kernel brings the ability to support external metadata arrays.
External metadata implies that user space handles all updates to the metadata.
The kernel's responsibility is to notify user space when a "metadata event"
occurs, like disk failures and clean-to-dirty transitions.  The kernel, in
important cases, waits for user space to take action on these notifications.

.SH DESCRIPTION
.SS Metadata updates:
To service metadata update requests a daemon,
.IR mdmon ,
is introduced.
.I Mdmon
is tasked with polling the sysfs namespace looking for changes in
.BR array_state ,
.BR sync_action ,
and per disk
.BR state
attributes.  When a change is detected it calls a per metadata type
handler to make modifications to the metadata.  The following actions
are taken:
.RS
.TP
.B array_state \- inactive
Clear the dirty bit for the volume and let the array be stopped
.TP
.B array_state \- write pending
Set the dirty bit for the array and then set
.B array_state
to
.BR active .
Writes
are blocked until userspace writes
.BR active.
.TP
.B array_state \- active-idle
The safe mode timer has expired so set array state to clean to block writes to the array
.TP
.B array_state \- clean
Clear the dirty bit for the volume
.TP
.B array_state \- read-only
This is the initial state that all arrays start at.
.I mdmon
takes one of the three actions:
.RS
.TP
1/
Transition the array to read-auto keeping the dirty bit clear if the metadata
handler determines that the array does not need resyncing or other modification
.TP
2/
Transition the array to active if the metadata handler determines a resync or
some other manipulation is necessary
.TP
3/
Leave the array read\-only if the volume is marked to not be monitored; for
example, the metadata version has been set to "external:\-dev/md127" instead of
"external:/dev/md127"
.RE
.TP
.B sync_action \- resync\-to\-idle
Notify the metadata handler that a resync may have completed.  If a resync
process is idled before it completes this event allows the metadata handler to
checkpoint resync.
.TP
.B sync_action \- recover\-to\-idle
A spare may have completed rebuilding so tell the metadata handler about the
state of each disk.  This is the metadata handler's opportunity to clear
any "out-of-sync" bits and clear the volume's degraded status.  If a recovery
process is idled before it completes this event allows the metadata handler to
checkpoint recovery.
.TP
.B <disk>/state \- faulty
A disk failure kicks off a series of events.  First, notify the metadata
handler that a disk has failed, and then notify the kernel that it can unblock
writes that were dependent on this disk.  After unblocking the kernel this disk
is set to be removed+ from the member array.  Finally the disk is marked failed
in all other member arrays in the container.
.IP
+ Note This behavior differs slightly from native MD arrays where
removal is reserved for a
.B mdadm --remove
event.  In the external metadata case the container holds the final
reference on a block device and a
.B mdadm --remove <container> <victim>
call is still required.
.RE

.SS Containers:
.P
External metadata formats, like DDF, differ from the native MD metadata
formats in that they define a set of disks and a series of sub-arrays
within those disks.  MD metadata in comparison defines a 1:1
relationship between a set of block devices and a RAID array.  For
example to create 2 arrays at different RAID levels on a single
set of disks, MD metadata requires the disks be partitioned and then
each array can be created with a subset of those partitions.  The
supported external formats perform this disk carving internally.
.P
Container devices simply hold references to all member disks and allow
tools like
.I mdmon
to determine which active arrays belong to which
container.  Some array management commands like disk removal and disk
add are now only valid at the container level.  Attempts to perform
these actions on member arrays are blocked with error messages like:
.IP
"mdadm: Cannot remove disks from a \'member\' array, perform this
operation on the parent container"
.P
Containers are identified in /proc/mdstat with a metadata version string
"external:<metadata name>". Member devices are identified by
"external:/<container device>/<member index>", or "external:-<container
device>/<member index>" if the array is to remain readonly.

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
CONTAINER
The
.B container
device to monitor.  It can be a full path like /dev/md/container, or a
simple md device name like md127.
.TP
.B \-\-foreground
Normally,
.I mdmon
will fork and continue in the background.  Adding this option will
skip that step and run
.I mdmon
in the foreground.
.TP
.B \-\-takeover
This instructs
.I mdmon
to replace any active
.I mdmon
which is currently monitoring the array.  This is primarily used late
in the boot process to replace any
.I mdmon
which was started from an
.B initramfs
before the root filesystem was mounted.  This avoids holding a
reference on that
.B initramfs
indefinitely and ensures that the
.I pid
and
.I sock
files used to communicate with
.I mdmon
are in a standard place.
.TP
.B \-\-all
This tells mdmon to find any active containers and start monitoring
each of them if appropriate.  This is normally used with
.B \-\-takeover
late in the boot sequence.
A separate
.I mdmon
process is started for each container as the
.B \-\-all
argument is over-written with the name of the container.  To allow for
containers with names longer than 5 characters, this argument can be
arbitrarily extended, e.g. to
.BR \-\-all-active-arrays .
.TP

.PP
Note that
.I mdmon
is automatically started by
.I mdadm
when needed and so does not need to be considered when working with
RAID arrays.  The only times it is run other than by
.I  mdadm
is when the boot scripts need to restart it after mounting the new
root filesystem.

.SH START UP AND SHUTDOWN

As
.I mdmon
needs to be running whenever any filesystem on the monitored device is
mounted there are special considerations when the root filesystem is
mounted from an
.I mdmon
monitored device.
Note that in general
.I mdmon
is needed even if the filesystem is mounted read-only as some
filesystems can still write to the device in those circumstances, for
example to replay a journal after an unclean shutdown.

When the array is assembled by the
.B initramfs
code, mdadm will automatically start
.I mdmon
as required.  This means that
.I mdmon
must be installed on the
.B initramfs
and there must be a writable filesystem (typically tmpfs) in which
.B mdmon
can create a
.B .pid
and
.B .sock
file.  The particular filesystem to use is given to mdmon at compile
time and defaults to
.BR /run/mdadm .

This filesystem must persist through to shutdown time.

After the final root filesystem has be instantiated (usually with
.BR pivot_root )
.I mdmon
should be run with
.I "\-\-all \-\-takeover"
so that the
.I mdmon
running from the
.B initramfs
can be replaced with one running in the main root, and so the
memory used by the initramfs can be released.

At shutdown time,
.I mdmon
should not be killed along with other processes.  Also as it holds a
file (socket actually) open in
.B /dev
(by default) it will not be possible to unmount
.B /dev
if it is a separate filesystem.

.SH EXAMPLES

.B "  mdmon \-\-all-active-arrays \-\-takeover"
.br
Any
.I mdmon
which is currently running is killed and a new instance is started.
This should be run during in the boot sequence if an initramfs was
used, so that any mdmon running from the initramfs will not hold
the initramfs active.
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR mdadm (8),
.IR md (4).