[ANNOUNCE] EVMS Release 0.2.4

[Kevin Corry]

Release 0.2.4 of the Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS) is now 
available for download at the project web site:
http://www.sf.net/projects/evms

Highlights for version 0.2.4

v0.2.4 - 12/11/01
- Core Engine
   - New feature header metadata layout
   - Added expand and shrink for volumes and storage objects
   - New plugin loading method
      - Allows multiple plugins per library file (suggested by Andrew Clausen)
   - Cleanup of unused device nodes in /dev (evms_devnode_fixup command)
- GUI
   - Expand and shrink support
   - User message and alert support
   - New window for displaying resulting objects after creates
   - Lots of task code bug-fixes
   - Better handling of changes to the various tree-views
- EVMS Command Line
   - Expand and shrink support
   - Added lots of on-line help
- MD/Software RAID Plugin
   - STILL VERY NEW AND NOT WELL TESTED! USE WITH CAUTION!
   - Support for Linear personality in the kernel
   - Ported MD superblock manipulation and I/O to EVMS plugin
   - Support for Linear and RAID 1 in the engine
- LVM Plugin
   - Added support for expanding and shrinking LVM regions
      - Does not support shrinking striped LVs yet.
   - Added lvextend and lvreduce to LVM Command Line Utilities
   - Safer handling of importing VGs/LVs from other machines.
- OS/2 Plugin
   - Complete discovery of OS/2 LVM volumes
- Bad Block Relocation
   - STILL EXPERIENCING BUGS. USE WITH CAUTION!
   - Support for one or two copies of BBR metadata
   - Switched to binary tree for in-memory remapping
- New ncurses-based user-interface
   - Currently displays all discovered objects in format similar to the GUI.
- Added cluster-enablement API stubs to kernel code
- Endian-neutrality for EVMS feature headers, all EVMS feature plugins, LVM
   region manager, OS/2 region manager, and default segment manager.
- New method for accessing the gendisk list during discovery. Uses the
   walk_gendisk() patch from Christoph Hellwig.
- Initial support for 2.5 kernels.
   - Core services and local device manager converted to new bio structures
   - Segment manager, LVM, Snapshot, and Drive-Linking plugins work as-is.
   - No testing yet on remaining plugins on 2.5.

Kevin Corry
[e-mail]
Enterprise Volume Management System
http://www.sf.net/projects/evms