Handbook obsolescence scan: "The vinum Volume Manager"

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 25 Jun 2013, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Jun 2013, Warren Block wrote:
>
>> Next on the list of potentially outdated things in the Handbook: "The vinum 
>> Volume Manager", a whole chapter on vinum.  Actually, it is really now 
>> about gvinum.
>> 
>> Are there any situations where new users should be advised to use gvinum 
>> rather than ZFS or gconcat/gstripe/gmirror?
>> 
>> What reasons are there for this chapter to remain in the Handbook given the 
>> newer, simpler alternatives?
>> 
>> If the information should remain, why should it be separate from the GEOM 
>> chapter?
>
> Hmm, I seem to recall there being desire to keep the documentation around the 
> last time this question came up, but don't remember why.  Let's go rooting 
> around in the archives...
>
> It seems that as of 2009, gvinum was still useful enough that I was happy to 
> have documentation fixes for it 
> (http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-doc/2009-May/015913.html), though 
> just two weeks later this thread 
> (http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2009-May/028730.html) 
> sees to indicate that it was dying already.  The documentation is always 
> behind on the times...
>
> I thought there was an attempt to remove gvinum or the documentation thereof 
> since then, but cannot find any record of it.  That means we don't get to 
> re-analyze the arguments presented then, and can just do it.

Moving it to an article should cover all the bases.  It won't be 
first-line information in the Handbook, but can still be found.  And 
eventually, if not already, we can have an archive section for obsolete 
information that may still be useful to someone, somewhere, but not most 
users.