********************************************************************************
*                                                                              *
*   dmraid (Device-Mapper Software RAID support tool) 1.0.0.rc16  2006.09.16   *
*                                                                              *
*   (C)opyright 2004-2009  Heinz Mauelshagen, Red Hat GmbH.                    *
*   All rights reserved.                                                       *
*                                                                              *
********************************************************************************

Feature set:
------------
This software supports RAID device discovery, RAID set activation, creation,
removal, rebuild and display of properties for ATARAID/DDF1 metadata.

dmraid uses libdevmapper and the device-mapper kernel runtime to create
devices with respective mappings for the ATARAID sets discovered.

The following ATARAID types are supported:

Adaptec HostRAID ASR
Highpoint HPT37X
Highpoint HPT45X
Intel Software RAID
JMicron JMB36x
LSI Logic MegaRAID
NVidia NForce
Promise FastTrack
Silicon Image Medley
SNIA DDF1
VIA Software RAID

Beside hints, enhancement proposals and patches, I want to know, if the mappings
the tool creates ("dmraid -tay") are correct for your ATARAID configuration.

Thank you for your support of dmraid.


License/Disclaimer:
-------------------
This software is released under the GPL/LGPL respectively.

See file headers, LICENSE, LICENSE_GPL and LICENSE_LGPL for details.

This is Alpha software and it can destroy your data!

So please take backups and start accessing your data in dmraid
activated ATARAID sets READ-ONLY first before you try to write it!


Minimum prerequisites to run this software:
-------------------------------------------

o a recent mainline Linux 2.6 kernel (includes needed
  device-mapper mirror changes)


Additional minimum prerequisites to build this software:
--------------------------------------------------------
o device mapper userpace installed (http://sources.redhat.com/dm/)

o the i386 rpm or source tarball for dmraid from
  http://people.redhat.com/heinzm/sw/dmraid/


Build/Install:
--------------
To install the rpm

rpm -i [--nodeps] dmraid-1.0.0.rc16.x86_64.rpm

- or -

to build in an empty directory and install from source

tar jxvf dmraid-1.0.0.rc16.tar.bz2
./configure	# see ./configure --help for options
make
make install


In case you want to dietize dmraid, you need to build device-mapper with
'make CC="diet cc"' *and* install libdevmapper.a as /lib/libdevmapper_dietc.a.

Run "./configure --enable-dietlibc" before make.


Howto start:
------------
See "dmraid -h" for the synopsis and "man dmraid" for more details
including some usage examples.

Your first command is probably "dmraid -s".

See TODO for known outstanding issues.

See doc/dmraid_design.txt for design notes.

See lib/format/template/ if you want to start your own metadata format
handler implementation :)


Contacts:
---------
The author can be reached at <[email protected]>.

For discussions, questions, patches, enhancement requests etc.,
please subscribe and mail to <[email protected]>.