RAID5 on FreeBSD 6 or 7

[Ivan Voras]

Wojciech Puchar wrote:

>> fast, though. See it's page on Wikipedia for more info. I'd use it
>> more if it
>> was part of official FreeBSD release, but for now it is only available
>> as a
>> patch (AFAIK).
> 
> which is strange. someone don't like RAID5 to be included in system?

I'd like to see graid5 in the base system but I'm also one of those who
sort-of held it back from being imported, at least by inaction. The
reasons are:

a) Last time there was discussion about including it (it's available
somewhere in the freebsd-geom list archives) an issue was raised about
its over-aggressive use of caching that is turned *on* by default. IIRC
it's also likely that the design of the current code doesn't allow
turning it off. I suppose this is what makes it fast but the concerns
for data stability / corruption are real and not imaginary.
b) It was developed by a non-developer. This in itself says nothing
about the quality or the lack of quality of the code and is technically
irrelevant but there are couple of organizational issues:
	1) it needs someone to look after it when it's imported
	2) it needs to conform to the style and code layout rules of the project

I can't find the patch right now so I can't say for sure what is its
state now. I believe that if issues a) and b.2) are solved there would
be no problems or objections in importing it.

(It could be said that ZFS makes it obsolete, but it's not so -
lightweight RAID and file systems will always have their use).

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