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From: arnold@emory.uucp (Arnold D. Robbins {EUCC})
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Disk striping? (4.3 BSD)
Message-ID: <2369@emory.uucp>
Date: Thu, 3-Dec-87 12:56:37 EST
Article-I.D.: emory.2369
Posted: Thu Dec  3 12:56:37 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Dec-87 06:18:58 EST
Organization: Math & Computer Science, Emory University, Atlanta
Lines: 22

Something that I've been wondering about for a while, and which
promises to expose my ignorance, is as follows. In standard 4.3 BSD, a
disk partition is a partition is a partition. You cannot put two 7 Meg
'A' partitions together and use them like one 14 Meg partition. (Some
vendors do allow this, e.g. Convex, but mostly it's few and far between.)

However, there is a limited form of disk striping already in the BSD
kernel: /dev/swap! One can swap on more than one physical disk at a time.

My question is, how general or non-general are the mechanisms used in
putting together the swap device? Is it unreasonable to adapt it for
more general purposes? It seems to me that this would be really useful,
as I'll bet lots of people have lots of unused 'A' and 'B' partitions.

Is there any chance disk striping will be in 4.4 BSD?

As they used to say, "Thanks in Advance".
-- 
Arnold Robbins
ARPA, CSNET:	arnold@emory.ARPA	BITNET: arnold@emory
UUCP: { decvax, gatech, }!emory!arnold	DOMAIN: arnold@emory.edu (soon)
	``csh: just say NO!''