dump routine for mlx devices

[Andrew Kinney]

On 25 Apr 2003, at 9:56, Fred Clift wrote:

> You wouldn't necessarily have to use the disk for swap space - just
> set it up as your dump device, but dont use it for swap at all. 

That thought had crossed my mind briefly, but then it was wisked 
away with the (apparently) mistaken belief that the dumpdev  
needed to be mounted as swap for the kernel to be able to access 
it at the time of the crash.

That belief has changed in the face of contrary truth.  

I think I see now why no one cares whether or not they can dump 
to a RAID.  If the IDE device isn't in use by the system except in 
the case of a crash, who cares if the device fails?  You might get 
some weird error messages, but the system shouldn't panic unless 
you do something wacked (like 'swapon /dev/broken-device') with 
the hardware after it has failed.  Of course, you still have to 
eventually take the system down and remove/replace the broken 
device, which is something I *don't* have to do if one of the 
physical drives backing my mlx RAID goes bad.

Thanks for the response, Fred.  It made things instantly clear for 
me.

Sincerely,
Andrew Kinney
President and
Chief Technology Officer
Advantagecom Networks, Inc.
http://www.advantagecom.net