vd(4)

NAME
     vd - virtual disk

DESCRIPTION
     The vd* devices are virtual disks made up by concatenating  one  or  more
     regular  disks  or partitions.  A virtual disk will appear to have a size
     equal to the sum of the sizes of the disks it is made of.  The blocks  in
     a  virtual disk are all the blocks in the real disks in the same order as
     the order in which the disks were attached to the virtual  disk.   So  if
     virtual  disk  vd  is made up of disks d0, d1, ...  dn then the following
     command will return true:

          cat d0 d1 ... dn | cmp - vd

     Virtual disks devices can be formed by using the following ioctl call  on
     an open virtual disk file descriptor:

          ioctl(fd, DIOCVDATTACH, &struct vdisk_attach);

     The third argument is a pointer to a struct vdisk_attach  as  defined  in
     <minix/vdisk.h>:

     struct vdisk_attach {
         int   index;          /* Position in the list of subdisks */
         int   task_nr;        /* Subdisk = <task, minor> */
         int   minor;
     };

     The index field is the position that the subdisk must have in the list of
     disks that make up the virtual disk.  Attaching the first disk with index
     0 (re)sets the list of subdisks to just that one disk.   Each  next  disk
     must have an index number that is one higher.

     The task_nr and minor fields specify the disk device to use as a subdisk.
     These  numbers  can  be  obtained by translating a device number with the
     FSDEVMAP svrctl call.

     One of the subdisks may be another virtual disk device.  There is  little
     reason  to do this now, but this may change if other methods of combining
     disks are implemented.

     The overhead of the virtual disk  driver  is  so  small  it  is  hard  to
     measure.   The main cost is a context switch to the task that handles the
     proper subdisk.  So there is no reason to shun the use of  virtual  disks
     for performance reasons.





FILES
     /dev/vd*

SEE ALSO
     ioctl(2), svrctl(2), vdisk.conf(5), vdisk_ctrl(8).

NOTES
     The driver allows up to 8 virtual  disks.   They  can  have  32  subdisks
     total.

     Virtual disks do not have partitions, so vd1 is not the  first  partition
     of vd0, they are separate virtual disks.

BUGS
     The "cat|cmp" example will fail if you use block devices that are  not  a
     whole number of kilobytes in length.  Raw devices always work.

     Other interesting ways of combining disks, like  striping,  may  well  be
     slower than concatenation under Minix.  So don't hold your breath.

     Disk devices used as subdisks should be made unusable to prevent aliasing
     problems.  For now, beware!

AUTHOR
     Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)