NAME
mdconfig
—
create and control memory
disks
SYNOPSIS
mdconfig |
-a -t
type [-n ]
[-o
[no ]option] ...
[-f file]
[-s size]
[-S sectorsize]
[-u unit]
[-x sectors/track]
[-y heads/cylinder]
[-L label] |
mdconfig |
-d -u
unit [-o
[no ]force] |
mdconfig |
-r -u
unit -s
size [-o
[no ]force] |
mdconfig |
-l [-n ]
[-v ] [-f
file] [-u
unit] |
mdconfig |
file |
DESCRIPTION
Themdconfig
utility creates and controls
md(4)
devices.
Options indicate an action to be performed:
-a
- Attach a memory disk. This will configure and attach a memory disk with
the parameters specified and attach it to the system. If the
-u
unit option is not provided, the newly created device name will be printed on stdout. -d
- Detach a memory disk from the system and release all resources.
-r
- Resize a memory disk.
-t
type- Select the type of the memory disk.
malloc
- Storage for this type of memory disk is allocated with
malloc(9). This limits the size to the malloc bucket
limit in the kernel. If the
-o
reserve
option is not set, creating and filling a large malloc-backed memory disk is a very easy way to panic the system. vnode
- A file specified with
-f
file becomes the backing store for this memory disk. swap
- Storage for this type of memory disk is allocated from buffer memory.
Pages get pushed out to swap when the system is under memory pressure,
otherwise they stay in the operating memory. Using
swap
backing is generally preferred instead of usingmalloc
backing. null
- Bitsink; all writes do nothing, all reads return zeroes.
-f
file- Filename to use for the vnode type memory disk. The
-a
and-t
vnode options are implied if not specified. -l
- List configured devices. If given with
-u
, display details about that particular device. If given with-f
file, display md(4) device names of which file is used as the backing store. If both of-u
and-f
options are specified, display devices which match the two conditions. If the-v
option is specified, show all details. -n
- When printing md(4) device names, print only the unit number without the md(4) prefix.
-s
size- Size of the memory disk. Size is the number of 512
byte sectors unless suffixed with a
b
,k
,m
,g
,t
, orp
which denotes byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte and petabyte respectively. When used without the-r
option, the-a
and-t
swap options are implied if not specified. -S
sectorsize- Sectorsize to use for the memory disk, in bytes.
-x
sectors/track- See the description of the
-y
option below. -y
heads/cylinder- For
malloc
orvnode
backed devices, the-x
and-y
options can be used to specify a synthetic geometry. This is useful for constructing bootable images for later download to other devices. -L
label- Associate a label (arbitrary string) with the new memory disk. The label
can then be inspected with
mdconfig-l
-v
-o
[no
]option- Set or reset options.
- [
no
]async
- For
vnode
backed devices: avoidIO_SYNC
for increased performance but at the risk of deadlocking the entire kernel. - [
no
]reserve
- Allocate and reserve all needed storage from the start, rather than as needed.
- [
no
]cluster
- Enable clustering on this disk.
- [
no
]compress
- Enable/disable compression features to reduce memory usage.
- [
no
]force
- Disable/enable extra sanity checks to prevent the user from doing
something that might adversely affect the system. This can be used
with the
-d
flag to forcibly destroy an md(4) disk that is still in use. - [
no
]readonly
- Enable/disable readonly mode.
- [
no
]verify
- For
vnode
backed devices: enable/disable requesting verification of the file used for backing store. The type of verification depends on which security features are available. One example of verification is testing file integrity with checksums or cryptographic signatures.
- [
-u
unit- Request a specific unit number or device name for the md(4) device instead of automatic allocation. If a device name is specified, it must be start with “md” followed by the unit number.
The last form, mdconfig
file, is provided for convenience as an abbreviation
of mdconfig
-a
-t
vnode
-f
file.
EXAMPLES
Create a disk with /tmp/boot.flp as
backing storage. The name of the allocated unit will be printed on stdout,
such as “md0
”:
mdconfig /tmp/boot.flp
Create a 1 gigabyte swap backed memory disk named
“md3
”:
mdconfig -s 1g -u md3
Detach and free all resources used by /dev/md3:
mdconfig -du md3
Show detailed information on current memory disks:
mdconfig -lv
Resize the “md3
” memory disk
to 2 gigabytes:
mdconfig -rs 2g -u md3
Create a 1 gigabyte swap backed disk, initialize an ffs(7) file system on it, and mount it on /tmp:
mdconfig -s 1g -u md10 newfs -U /dev/md10 mount /dev/md10 /tmp chmod 1777 /tmp
Create a memory disk out of an ISO 9660 CD image file, using the first available md(4) device, and then mount it:
mount -t cd9660 /dev/`mdconfig -f cdimage.iso` /mnt
Create a file-backed device from a hard disk image that begins with 512K of raw header information. gnop(8) is used to skip over the header information, positioning md1.nop to the start of the filesystem in the image.
mdconfig -u md1 -f diskimage.img gnop create -o 512K md1 mount /dev/md1.nop /mnt
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The mdconfig
utility first appeared in
FreeBSD 5.0 as a cleaner replacement for the
vn(4)
and vnconfig(8) combo.
AUTHORS
The mdconfig
utility was written by
Poul-Henning Kamp
<phk@FreeBSD.org>.