Software-RAID-HOWTO

Hi all
The linux-raid community has moved on considerably from the
approach described
in the Software-RAID-HOWTO which primarily focuses on the
unsupported raidtools
software. Users would arrive on the mailing list dazed and
confused - clearly
something needed to be done!

So some time back I contacted the authors and began the
process of updating the
Software-RAID-HOWTO and bringing the license to GFDL (see
http://l
inux-raid.osdl.org/index.php/Credits)

The updated docs are now managed as a wiki (although still
available as a single
document at http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php?title=
Overview&printable=yes)

Ideally the HOWTO here http:/
/tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html should now
be deprecated to h
ttp://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-2004.html and
replaced with:



As of 2006 the Linux RAID HOWTO is now maintained as a wiki
by the linux-raid
community at
   http://linux-raid.osdl.or
g/

The 2004 HOWTO is available here:
  h
ttp://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-2004.html




If you feel that this is not appropriate then could we at
least amend the header
text along those lines?

The idea of moving the HOWTO is to quickly expire old links
- if TLDP has a
better method for preventing the continued referencing of
out-of-date info then
I'm happy with whatever you feel is best.

If you feel I should be approaching this in a different
manner then please let
me know.

Thanks

David Greaves


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(Just as a point of clarification, I really don't speak for
LDP:  I'm
just a system administrator who maintains one LDP HOWTO and
one FAQ, and
helps with some of the copyediting.  But volunteers and
process are
really all that LDP has, a point I'll return to, below.)

Quoting David Greaves (daviddgreaves.com):

> There isn't one - it's a wiki

But LDP doesn't publish wikis, and in particular doesn't
publish _your_
wiki.  It has a process and classification scheme, resulting
in a
somewhat orderly collection of documents in its collection
and mirrors.

When I took over a HOWTO at the request of its original
author, it had
been unmaintained for (IIRC) seven years, needing a pretty
thorough
rewrite.  So, I got the old LinuxDoc source, rewrote the
text,
eventually remembered I should follow the process described
in the
Author Guide, and submitted the first of series of
revisions.

You don't want to do that.  You want LDP to merely point to
a non-LDP
document outside its collection.  In my opinion, that's too
bad, and I'd 
suggest you rethink your entire approach.  

There's very little work remaining for you to submit
http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php?title=
Overview&printable=yes as a
new version of the HOWTO.  To repeat my suggestion -- which
you have so
far flatly ignored and merely reiterated (paraphrasing)
"The hell with
LDP's process; link to my wiki" -- why don't you
skim-read the Author
Guide and send in a revision?  You don't even need to mark
it up; it can
just be flat ASCII, and one of the rest of us can fix that
part.  That's
the way LDP gets things done, and helping LDP get things
done helps the
Linux community.

Thanks to your and the other wiki volunteers' use of GFDL
licensing,
it's actually possible for anyone _else_ (me, the LDP core
staff, anyone
at all) to pick up your wikified text, massage it very
minimally, and
submit it _as_ a suggested replacement of the new HOWTO, but
that would
be just a bit rude, and (I infer) isn't how LDP normally
operates.  And
LDP doesn't (I infer) have time and energy to deal with
mildly annoyed
authors saying "Hey, I never submitted that GLDP'd Web
site text as a
HOWTO!"

I hope you realise you're not the first person who's told
LDP "The hell
with your publication process; link to my wiki." 
You're not.  There's
been a virtual small parade of such folk.  Every Tom, Dick,
and Harry
has a wiki.  I like wikis.  However, asking LDP to link to
other
people's wikis is nothing at all like its publications
process.  Why
don't you give that publication process a try, rather than
utterly
ignoring it?


Apologies if the above is insufficiently diplomatic.  I'm
aiming for
both courtesy and clarity, but perhaps stressing the latter
over the
former.

> > Other than that, you should probably look at the
LDP Author Guide for
> > more tips and procedure for submitting a HOWTO. 
Telling LDP "I've
> > written a HOWTO, so please hyperlink to it"
is generous but is not the
> > right way.  ;->
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion - but that's not the
immediate point 

It's _my_ immediate point.  Any lack of diplomacy on my part
might be
traceable to your saying, in effect, "The hell with
your point and the
hell with LDP's process; link to my wiki."  

Since I and countless other LDP authors find that
publication process
easy and reasonable, I have to wonder why you don't, and
flatly ignore
polite suggestions that you make at least a tiny effort to
follow it.

(And that, I guess, is why I'm a sysadmin rather than a
diplomat.)


______________________
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Rick Moen wrote:

> Since I and countless other LDP authors find that
publication process
> easy and reasonable,

not as easy as some would like, but certainly reasonable

I, myself, own several wikis, but

* if a wiki is open as it use to be, the doc is not suited
to ldp 
(unstable)

* if the wiki is only written by the owner (not really a
wiki, then), 
why not do a linuxdoc (or better docbook) source?

the main goals are two:

* stability: the doc must'nt change without the authors
will
* versatility: the doc have to be spread in numerous forms
(and they 
may be docbook backends for most wikis)

jdd

-- 
http://www.dodin.net

______________________
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'Afternoon, all,

Short-time reader, first time poster.

One of the things that I like about the LDP is that it keeps
documents
in easily downloadable and translatable formats - great for
downloading onto Palms so I can get a little extra reading
done whilst
I'm stuck on the subway.  Wikis, to my understanding, don't
have this
facility.

Secondly, many sites refer users looking for introductions
and
hand-holding to the LDP as the primary documentation source
-
particularly if the man pages are over your head.  What
makes the LDP
attractive to me is that I can learn new concepts in nicely
digestable
chunks without having to crosslink and return from other
reference
pages.  I know that I can start at page 1 in a document on
the LDP and
progress with a consistent narrative to the last page.

For these reasons, I think that outsourcing the RAID howto
to an
external wiki will weaken the LDP's usefulness both a
primary and
versatile reference.

I understand, though that the LDP cannot keep up with new
releases
because of its writing process, which I think is the
fundamental
reason for linking the LDP's RAID guide to the wiki.

Therefore, perhaps an appropriate compromise would be to
base an
updated RAID-Howto on the wiki's documentation - consider it
a
'stable' snapshot of the wiki.  The wiki would serve as a
'testing'
release of the same documentation.  Yes, I'm a Debian user.

That way, the documentation remains current, fairly
non-redundant, and
doesn't compromise LDP's integrity.

Or maybe I'm missing the point entirely.

With regards,

Borden Rhodes

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'Afternoon, all,

Short-time reader, first time poster.

One of the things that I like about the LDP is that it keeps
documents
in easily downloadable and translatable formats - great for
downloading onto Palms so I can get a little extra reading
done whilst
I'm stuck on the subway.  Wikis, to my understanding, don't
have this
facility.

Secondly, many sites refer users looking for introductions
and
hand-holding to the LDP as the primary documentation source
-
particularly if the man pages are over your head.  What
makes the LDP
attractive to me is that I can learn new concepts in nicely
digestable
chunks without having to crosslink and return from other
reference
pages.  I know that I can start at page 1 in a document on
the LDP and
progress with a consistent narrative to the last page.

For these reasons, I think that outsourcing the RAID howto
to an
external wiki will weaken the LDP's usefulness both a
primary and
versatile reference.

I understand, though that the LDP cannot keep up with new
releases
because of its writing process, which I think is the
fundamental
reason for linking the LDP's RAID guide to the wiki.

Therefore, perhaps an appropriate compromise would be to
base an
updated RAID-Howto on the wiki's documentation - consider it
a
'stable' snapshot of the wiki.  The wiki would serve as a
'testing'
release of the same documentation.  Yes, I'm a Debian user.

That way, the documentation remains current, fairly
non-redundant, and
doesn't compromise LDP's integrity.

Or maybe I'm missing the point entirely?

With regards,

Borden Rhodes

______________________
http://lists.tldp.org/

Quoting dominussuusgmail.com (dominussuusgmail.com):

> Therefore, perhaps an appropriate compromise would be
to base an
> updated RAID-Howto on the wiki's documentation -
consider it a
> 'stable' snapshot of the wiki.

You may recall that I pretty much suggested exactly this to
David
Greaves.  Except I suggested that it'd be appropriate for
_him_ to submit
that document, which is the normal way LDP receives
additions to its
collection.  (LDP's tiny volunteer staff don't sit around
all day
roaming the Web, looking for candidate documents to convert
to HOWTOs.)

It would be nice if he also at least skim-read the Author
Guide, and
took at least a lazy swipe at providing content in the
format LDP
documents actually follow, but (if I understand correctly)
not
essential.

> The wiki would serve as a 'testing' release of the same
documentation.  

Sure, just as I maintain the development versions of both of
my LDP
documents on my own Web server (and, IIRC, mention that fact
inside the
documents, with hyperlinks).  I suspect most of us do
something like
that.

Minor quibble:  When a volunteer group says "Here is
our process", 
and a newcomer would rather ignore it completely, it's
unclear to me
that an "appropriate compromise" is, well,...
appropriate.  More at:
h
ttp://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#compromise  (As
that lexicon 
entry pokes minor fun at Americans, I should point out that
I am one.)

-- 
Cheers,             The genius of you Americans is that you
never make 
Rick Moen           clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated
stupid moves 
ricklinuxmafia.com that make us wonder at the possibility
that there may be 
                    something to them that we are missing.
--Gamel Abdel Nasser

______________________
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Hi,
LDP can provide wiki (e.g. moinmoin) but
I cannot see the diference between storing
files in wiki and in cvs, as we do currently.

SP

______________________
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Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:
> Hi,
> LDP can provide wiki (e.g. moinmoin) but
> I cannot see the diference between storing
> files in wiki and in cvs, as we do currently.

no wiki have docbook syntax AFAIK

jdd


-- 
http://www.dodin.net

______________________
http://lists.tldp.org/

dominussuusgmail.com wrote:
> 'Afternoon, all,
Evenin'

I'm glad I'm getting some responses on this - thank you.


> Short-time reader, first time poster.
> 
> One of the things that I like about the LDP is that it
keeps documents
> in easily downloadable and translatable formats - great
for
> downloading onto Palms so I can get a little extra
reading done whilst
> I'm stuck on the subway.  Wikis, to my understanding,
don't have this
> facility.
Not without some forethought, which, to a small degree, I
had 

> Secondly, many sites refer users looking for
introductions and
> hand-holding to the LDP as the primary documentation
source -
> particularly if the man pages are over your head.  What
makes the LDP
> attractive to me is that I can learn new concepts in
nicely digestable
> chunks without having to crosslink and return from
other reference
> pages.  I know that I can start at page 1 in a document
on the LDP and
> progress with a consistent narrative to the last page.
Agreed.
My concern is that following the current narrative will kill
your data (OK, I
exaggerate).

> For these reasons, I think that outsourcing the RAID
howto to an
> external wiki will weaken the LDP's usefulness both a
primary and
> versatile reference.
Yes, but I rather selfishly put the HOWTO onto a wiki
valuing community
contributions and maintenance over an outdated document that
I have to jump
through hoops with some group that doesn't really care about
RAID in order to
assist people in my own community!!!
LDP is hurting people in this case - not helping them. Blunt
but true.

(nb, by "my own" I mean the linux-kernel mailing
list and the linux-raid mailing
list; ie where the developers who wrote md and mdadm hang
out to assist users
with md/mdadm).

> I understand, though that the LDP cannot keep up with
new releases
> because of its writing process, which I think is the
fundamental
> reason for linking the LDP's RAID guide to the wiki.
Indeed.

> Therefore, perhaps an appropriate compromise would be
to base an
> updated RAID-Howto on the wiki's documentation -
consider it a
> 'stable' snapshot of the wiki.  The wiki would serve as
a 'testing'
> release of the same documentation.  Yes, I'm a Debian
user.
>
> That way, the documentation remains current, fairly
non-redundant, and
> doesn't compromise LDP's integrity.
> 
> Or maybe I'm missing the point entirely?

You're absolutely not - thanks for volunteering 

Create an account on the wiki and see how the link in my
original post makes use
of Wikimedia's capability to join sections to form a single
HOWTO.

The HOWTO does need updating before it's ready for another
release though - some
raidtools references remain  - but if you handle the
conversion to an LDP HOWTO
then over time I'm sure I can muster up some more volunteers
to finalise the
content.

Of course, in the meantime the RAID community is being
blocked (OK, "finding it
hard") from pointing users at it's own managed
documentation.

So I reiterate - deprecate the HOWTO and link to the wiki
please...

David

PS I'd cc lkml and the linux-raid groups but their policy is
no cc'ing of
subscription only mailing lists...

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Quoting David Greaves (daviddgreaves.com):

> Yes, but I rather selfishly put the HOWTO onto a wiki
valuing community
> contributions and maintenance over an outdated document
that I have to jump
> through hoops with some group that doesn't really care
about RAID in order to
> assist people in my own community!!!
> LDP is hurting people in this case - not helping them.
Blunt but true.

When you're quite done standing on a soapbox and berating
the LDP, are
you going to e-mail some halfway reasonable incarnation of
your HOWTO to
submiten.tldp.org, or no?

I'm guessing "no", and you're just intending to do
as much
self-justificatory damage on your way out as you can manage.
 (See also:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw
-murdersuicide )
And also intending to promote your wiki, of course.

Feel free to pleasantly surprise me and shame me for my
cynical nature,
but I'll not be holding my breath.

> Of course, in the meantime the RAID community is being
blocked....

Your finger that could otherwise press the "send"
button is broken?  ;->

It's absolutely not up to me, but I'd personally urge
telling you "Have
a nice day" until you fix the attitude.



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