Manual Pages  — MDCONFIG

Options indicate an action to be performed:

-a
	Attach a memory disk. This will configure and attach a memory disk with the parameters specified and attach it to the system. If the -u unit option is not provided, the newly created device name will be printed on stdout.
-d
	Detach a memory disk from the system and release all resources.
-r
	Resize a memory disk.
-t type
	Select the type of the memory disk.
malloc
	Storage for this type of memory disk is allocated with malloc(9). This limits the size to the malloc bucket limit in the kernel. If the -o reserve option is not set, creating and filling a large malloc-backed memory disk is a very easy way to panic the system.
vnode	A file specified with -f file becomes the backing store for this memory disk.
swap	Storage for this type of memory disk is allocated from buffer memory. Pages get pushed out to swap when the system is under memory pressure, otherwise they stay in the operating memory. Using swap backing is generally preferred instead of using malloc backing.
null	Bitsink; all writes do nothing, all reads return zeroes.

-f file
	Filename to use for the vnode type memory disk. The -a and -t vnode options are implied if not specified.
-l
	List configured devices. If given with -u, display details about that particular device. If given with -f file, display md(4) device names of which file is used as the backing store. If both of -u and -f options are specified, display devices which match the two conditions. If the -v option is specified, show all details.
-n
	When printing md(4) device names, print only the unit number without the md(4) prefix.
-s size
	Size of the memory disk. Size is the number of 512 byte sectors unless suffixed with a b, k, m, g, t, or p which denotes byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte and petabyte respectively. When used without the -r option, the -a and -t swap options are implied if not specified.
-S sectorsize
	Sectorsize to use for the memory disk, in bytes.
-x sectors/track
	See the description of the -y option below.
-y heads/cylinder
	For malloc or vnode backed devices, the -x and -y options can be used to specify a synthetic geometry. This is useful for constructing bootable images for later download to other devices.
-L label
	Associate a label (arbitrary string) with the new memory disk. The label can then be inspected with Fl
-o [ no ]option
	Set or reset options.
[ no ] async
	For vnode backed devices: avoid IO_SYNC for increased performance but at the risk of deadlocking the entire kernel.
[ no ] reserve
	Allocate and reserve all needed storage from the start, rather than as needed.
[ no ] cluster
	Enable clustering on this disk.
[ no ] compress
	Enable/disable compression features to reduce memory usage.
[ no ] force
	Disable/enable extra sanity checks to prevent the user from doing something that might adversely affect the system. This can be used with the -d flag to forcibly destroy an md(4) disk that is still in use.
[ no ] readonly
	Enable/disable readonly mode.
[ no ] verify
	For vnode backed devices: enable/disable requesting verification of the file used for backing store. The type of verification depends on which security features are available. One example of verification is testing file integrity with checksums or cryptographic signatures.

-u unit
	Request a specific unit number or device name for the md(4) device instead of automatic allocation. If a device name is specified, it must start with "md" followed by the unit number.

The last form, mdconfig file, is provided for convenience as an abbreviation of mdconfig -a -t vnode -f file.

mdconfig /tmp/boot.flp

mdconfig -s 1g -u md3

mdconfig -du md3

mdconfig -lv

mdconfig -rs 2g -u md3

Create a 1 gigabyte swap backed disk, initialize an ffs(7) file system on it, and mount it on /tmp:

mdconfig -s 1g -u md10
newfs -U /dev/md10
mount /dev/md10 /tmp
chmod 1777 /tmp

Create a memory disk out of an ISO 9660 CD image file, using the first available md(4) device, and then mount it:

mount -t cd9660 /dev/`mdconfig -f cdimage.iso` /mnt

Create a file-backed device from a hard disk image that begins with 512K of raw header information. gnop(8) is used to skip over the header information, positioning md1.nop to the start of the filesystem in the image.

mdconfig -u md1 -f diskimage.img
gnop create -o 512K md1
mount /dev/md1.nop /mnt