BIOCTL(8)

NAME
bioctl - RAID management interface

SYNOPSIS
bioctl [-hiqv] [-a alarm-function] [-b channel:target[.lun]] [-H channel:target[.lun]] [-R device channel:target[.lun]] [-u channel:target[.lun]] device

bioctl [-dhiPqsv] [-C flag[,flag,...]] [-c raidlevel] [-k keydisk] [-l special[,special,...]] [-p passfile] [-R device channel:target[.lun]] [-r rounds] device

DESCRIPTION
RAID device drivers which support management functionality can register their services with the bio(4) driver. bioctl then can be used to maintain RAID volumes.

In the first synopsis, RAID controllers are managed. device specifies either a drive (e.g. sd0) or a RAID controller (e.g. ami0). For operations which will be performed against ses(4) or safte(4) enclosures, it is also possible to directly specify the enclosure name (e.g. safte0).

In the second synopsis, softraid(4) devices are managed. device specifies either a drive (e.g. sd0) or a softraid(4) device (e.g. softraid0).

The options for RAID controllers are as follows:

-a alarm-function
    Control the RAID card's alarm functionality, if supported. alarm-function may be one of:

    disable
        Disable the alarm on the RAID controller.
    enable
        Enable the alarm on the RAID controller.
    get Retrieve the current alarm state (enabled or disabled).
    silence | quiet
        Silence the alarm if it is currently beeping.

    The alarm-function may be specified as given above, or by the first letter only (e.g. -a e).

-b channel:target[.lun]
    Instruct the device at channel:target[.lun] to start blinking, if there is ses(4) or safte(4) support in the enclosure.

-H channel:target[.lun]
    If the device at channel:target[.lun] is currently marked “Unused”, promote it to being a “Hot Spare”.

-h  Where necessary, produce “human-readable” output. Use unit suffixes: Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte, Exabyte in order to reduce the number of digits to four or less.

-i  Enumerate the selected RAID devices. This is the default if no other option is given.

-q  Show vendor, product, revision, and serial number for the given disk.

-R device channel:target[.lun]
    Manually kick off a rebuild of a RAID volume, using device or channel:target[.lun] as a new chunk (with softraid(4), a partition of fstype “RAID”) in the volume. device must be specified as a full path to the chunk device file (e.g. /dev/wd0d). A RAID volume rather than a RAID controller is expected as the final argument.

-u channel:target[.lun]
    Instruct the device at channel:target[.lun] to cease blinking, if there is ses(4) or safte(4) support in the enclosure.

-v  Be more verbose in output.

In addition to the relevant options listed above, the options for softraid(4) devices are as follows:

-C flag[,flag,...]
    Pass flag to bioctl. May be one of:

    force
        Force the operation; for example, force the creation of volumes with unclean data in the metadata areas.
    noauto
        Do not automatically assemble this volume at boot time.

-c raidlevel
    Create a softraid(4) device of level raidlevel. The device must begin with “softraid” followed by a number.

    Valid raidlevels are:

    0   RAID 0: A striping discipline.
    1   RAID 1: A mirroring discipline.
    4   RAID 4: A striping discipline with fixed parity chunk.
    5   RAID 5: A striping discipline with floating parity chunk.
    C   CRYPTO: An encrypting discipline.

    The RAID 0 and RAID 1 disciplines requires a minimum of two devices passed to -l, RAID 4 and RAID 5 require at least three devices, and the CRYPTO discipline requires exactly one.

-d  Delete volume specified by device.

-k keydisk
    Use special device keydisk as a key disk for a crypto volume.

-l special[,special,...]
    Use special device list to create within the softraid(4) framework. Requires -c.

-P  Change the passphrase on the selected crypto volume.

-p passfile
    Passphrase file used when crypto volumes are brought up. This file must be root owned and have 0600 permissions. This option cannot be used during the initial creation of the crypto volume.

-r rounds
    When creating an encrypted volume, specifies the number of iterations of the PBKDF2 algorithm used to convert a passphrase into a key. Higher iteration counts take more time, but offer more resistance to key guessing attacks. The minimum is 1000 rounds and the default is 8192.

-s  Read the passphrase for the selected crypto volume from /dev/stdin rather than /dev/tty. This option cannot be used during the initial creation of the crypto volume.

EXAMPLES
The following command, executed from the command line, would configure the device softraid0 with 4 special devices (/dev/sd2e, /dev/sd3e, /dev/sd4e, /dev/sd5e) and a raid level of 1:

    # bioctl -c 1 -l /dev/sd2e,/dev/sd3e,/dev/sd4e,/dev/sd5e softraid0

The following command, executed from the command line, would configure the device softraid0 with one special device (/dev/sd2e) and an encrypting volume:

    # bioctl -c C -l /dev/sd2e softraid0

bioctl will ask for a passphrase, which will be needed to unlock the encrypted disk. After creating a newly encrypted disk, the first megabyte of it should be zeroed, so tools like fdisk(8) or disklabel(8) don't get confused by the random data that appears on the new disk. This can be done with the following command (assuming the new disk is sd3):

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd3c bs=1m count=1

Deleting a softraid volume requires the exact volume name. For example:

    # bioctl -d sd2

The following command starts a rebuild of the degraded softraid volume sd0 using a new chunk on wd0d:

    # bioctl -R /dev/wd0d sd0

SEE ALSO
bio(4), scsi(4), softraid(4) RFC 2898, PKCS #5: Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.0, 2000.

HISTORY
The bioctl command first appeared in OpenBSD 3.8.

AUTHORS
The bioctl interface was written by Marco Peereboom <marco@openbsd.org>.

CAVEATS
Use of the CRYPTO & RAID 4/5 disciplines are currently considered experimental.