GSTRIPE(8)

💅 GSTRIPE(8) — the striped-device control utility bestie 💫

okay so this is the gstripe manual page, from the System Manager's Manual section 8 — yes, that section, the admin-y one. buckle up 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

gstripe — control utility for striped devices 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gstripe create [-v] [-s stripesize] name prov prov ...
gstripe destroy [-fv] name ...
gstripe label [-hv] [-s stripesize] name prov prov ...
gstripe stop [-fv] name ...
gstripe clear [-v] prov ...
gstripe dump prov ...
gstripe list
gstripe status
gstripe load
gstripe unload

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So the gstripe utility is literally how you set up a stripe across two or more disks. that's the whole vibe. and it can configure your striped device two different ways: "manual" or "automatic" ✨

• with the "manual" method, no metadata gets stored on the devices at all, so the striped device has to be configured by hand every single time it's needed 😭 (iconic but highkey exhausting).
• the "automatic" method uses on-disk metadata to detect devices. once devices are labeled, they'll be automatically detected and configured 🫶 no cap.

The first argument to gstripe tells it which action to perform:

• create — set up a striped device from the given devices with the specified name. this is the "manual" method, and the stripe will not exist after a reboot (see "DESCRIPTION" above 💀). the kernel module geom_stripe.ko will be loaded if it's not loaded already.
• label — set up a striped device from the given devices with the specified name. this is the "automatic" method, where metadata gets stored in every device's last sector 💾. the kernel module geom_stripe.ko will be loaded if it's not loaded already.
• stop — turn off an existing striped device by its name. this command does not touch on-disk metadata! 🙈
• destroy — same as stop.
• clear — clear metadata on the given devices.
• dump — dump metadata stored on the given devices.
• list — see geom(8).
• status — see geom(8).
• load — see geom(8).
• unload — see geom(8).

🎀 Additional options 🎀

• -f — force the removal of the specified striped device 💅
• -h — hardcode providers' names in metadata
• -s stripesize — specifies size of stripe block in bytes. the stripesize must be a multiple of the largest sector size of all the providers ⚠️ (fr fr, it has to be)
• -v — be more verbose 🗣️

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⭐ SYSCTL VARIABLES ⭐

The following sysctl(8) variables can be used to control the behavior of the STRIPE GEOM class. the default value is shown next to each variable 👑

• kern.geom.stripe.debug: 0 — debug level of the STRIPE GEOM class. this can be set to a number between 0 and 3 inclusive. if set to 0 minimal debug information is printed, and if set to 3 the maximum amount of debug information is printed 🔍
• kern.geom.stripe.fast: 0 — if set to a non-zero value, enable "fast mode" instead of the normal "economic mode". compared to "economic mode", "fast mode" uses more memory, but it's much faster for smaller stripe sizes 🔥. if enough memory cannot be allocated, STRIPE will fall back to "economic mode".
• kern.geom.stripe.maxmem: 13107200 — maximum amount of memory that can be consumed by "fast mode" (in bytes). this sysctl(8) variable is read-only and can only be set as a tunable in loader.conf(5) 🚫
• kern.geom.stripe.fast_failed — a count of how many times "fast mode" has failed due to an insufficient amount of memory. if this value is large, you should consider increasing the kern.geom.stripe.maxmem value 👀

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🦋 EXIT STATUS 🦋

Exit status is 0 on success, and 1 if the command fails. simple as that 💜

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

the following example shows how to set up a striped device from four disks with a 128KB stripe size for automatic configuration, create a file system on it, and mount it 🎀:

gstripe label -v -s 131072 data /dev/da0 /dev/da1 /dev/da2 /dev/da3
newfs /dev/stripe/data
mount /dev/stripe/data /mnt
[...]
umount /mnt
gstripe stop data
gstripe unload

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💀 COMPATIBILITY 💀

The gstripe interleave is in number of bytes, unlike ccdconfig(8) which uses the number of sectors. a ccdconfig(8) ileave of '128' is 64 KB (128 512B sectors). the same stripe interleave would be specified as '65536' for gstripe. don't mix these up bestie, i'm begging 😭

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

geom(4), loader.conf(5), ccdconfig(8), geom(8), mount(8), newfs(8), sysctl(8), umount(8)

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🍓 HISTORY 🍓

The gstripe utility appeared in FreeBSD 5.3. vintage ✨

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💜 AUTHORS 💜

Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org> — king behavior 👑

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this page is from the Debian build, dated January 23, 2025 — so that's the source, version vibe and date all in one cute lil sign-off 🧚💖 tysm for reading, go stripe some disks responsibly!! 🎀💅