BIOCTL(8)               OpenBSD System Manager's Manual              BIOCTL(8)

NAME
     bioctl - RAID management interface

SYNOPSIS
     bioctl [-dhiqv] [-a alarm-function] [-b channel:target[.lun]]
            [-C flag[,flag,...]] [-c raidlevel] [-H channel:target[.lun]]
            [-l special[,special,...]] [-r rounds] [-u channel:target[.lun]]
            device

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

     The options 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.

     -C flag[,flag,...]
             Pass flags when doing operations with bioctl.  May be one of:

             force    Force the operation, e.g. to force creation of volumes
                      with unclean data in the metatdata areas.
             noauto   Ignore this RAID volume upon reboot.

     -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.
                   C       CRYPTO: An encrypting discipline.

     -d      Delete volume specified by device.

     -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 suf-
             fixes: 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.

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

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

     -r rounds
             When creating an encrypted volume, specifies the number of itera-
             tions of the 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 de-
             fault is 8192.

     -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.

     device  Select a drive by name (e.g. sd0) or a RAID controller by name
             (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).

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 encrypt-
     ing volume:

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

     bioctl will ask for a passphrase, that will be needed to unlock the en-
     crypted disk.  After creating a new encrypted disk, it should be zeroed
     with the following command (assuming the new disk is sd3):

        # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd3c

SEE ALSO
     ami(4), arc(4), bio(4), ciss(4), mfi(4), safte(4), scsi(4), ses(4),
     softraid(4)

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 discipline is currently considered experimental.

OpenBSD 4.4                      July 21, 2008                               2
