GSTRIPE(8)              FreeBSD System Manager's Manual             GSTRIPE(8)

NAME
     gstripe - control utility for striped devices

SYNOPSIS
     gstripe create [-v] [-s stripesize] name prov prov ...
     gstripe destroy [-fv] name ...
     gstripe label [-hv] [-s stripesize] name prov prov ...
     gstripe stop [-fv] name ...
     gstripe clear [-v] prov ...
     gstripe dump prov ...
     gstripe list
     gstripe status
     gstripe load
     gstripe unload

DESCRIPTION
     The gstripe utility is used for setting up a stripe on two or more disks.
     The striped device can be configured using two different methods:
     "manual" or "automatic".  When using the "manual" method, no metadata are
     stored on the devices, so the striped device has to be configured by hand
     every time it is needed.  The "automatic" method uses on-disk metadata to
     detect devices.  Once devices are labeled, they will be automatically
     detected and configured.

     The first argument to gstripe indicates an action to be performed:

     create       Set up a striped device from the given devices with
                  specified name.  This is the "manual" method and the stripe
                  will not exist after a reboot (see DESCRIPTION above).  The
                  kernel module geom_stripe.ko will be loaded if it is not
                  loaded already.

     label        Set up a striped device from the given devices with the
                  specified name.  This is the "automatic" method, where
                  metadata are stored in every device's last sector.  The
                  kernel module geom_stripe.ko will be loaded if it is not
                  loaded already.

     stop         Turn off an existing striped device by its name.  This
                  command does not touch on-disk metadata!

     destroy      Same as stop.

     clear        Clear metadata on the given devices.

     dump         Dump metadata stored on the given devices.

     list         See geom(8).

     status       See geom(8).

     load         See geom(8).

     unload       See geom(8).

     Additional options:

     -f                   Force the removal of the specified striped device.

     -h                   Hardcode providers' names in metadata.

     -s stripesize        Specifies size of stripe block in bytes.  The
                          stripesize must be a multiple of the largest sector
                          size of all the providers.

     -v                   Be more verbose.

SYSCTL VARIABLES
     The following sysctl(8) variables can be used to control the behavior of
     the STRIPE GEOM class.  The default value is shown next to each variable.

     kern.geom.stripe.debug: 0
             Debug level of the STRIPE GEOM class.  This can be set to a
             number between 0 and 3 inclusive.  If set to 0 minimal debug
             information is printed, and if set to 3 the maximum amount of
             debug information is printed.

     kern.geom.stripe.fast: 0
             If set to a non-zero value enable "fast mode" instead of the
             normal "economic mode".  Compared to "economic mode", "fast mode"
             uses more memory, but it is much faster for smaller stripe sizes.
             If enough memory cannot be allocated, STRIPE will fall back to
             "economic mode".

     kern.geom.stripe.maxmem: 13107200
             Maximum amount of memory that can be consumed by "fast mode" (in
             bytes).  This sysctl(8) variable is read-only and can only be set
             as a tunable in loader.conf(5).

     kern.geom.stripe.fast_failed
             A count of how many times "fast mode" has failed due to an
             insufficient amount of memory.  If this value is large, you
             should consider increasing the kern.geom.stripe.maxmem value.

EXIT STATUS
     Exit status is 0 on success, and 1 if the command fails.

EXAMPLES
     The following example shows how to set up a striped device from four
     disks with a 128KB stripe size for automatic configuration, create a file
     system on it, and mount it:

           gstripe label -v -s 131072 data /dev/da0 /dev/da1 /dev/da2 /dev/da3
           newfs /dev/stripe/data
           mount /dev/stripe/data /mnt
           [...]
           umount /mnt
           gstripe stop data
           gstripe unload

COMPATIBILITY
     The gstripe interleave is in number of bytes, unlike ccdconfig(8) which
     use the number of sectors.  A ccdconfig(8) ileave of `128' is 64 KB (128
     512B sectors).  The same stripe interleave would be specified as `65536'
     for gstripe.

SEE ALSO
     geom(4), loader.conf(5), ccdconfig(8), geom(8), gvinum(8), mount(8),
     newfs(8), sysctl(8), umount(8)

HISTORY
     The gstripe utility appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS
     Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6          May 21, 2004          FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6