User volumes as block devices without mounting in v1.10

[michaelbeaumont]

Will it be possible to create a user volume that isn't mounted automatically but instead can be used as a simple block device, for example by Mayastor? UserVolumeConfig doesn't seem to allow for disabling the mounting. I haven't seen explicit mention of the supported features/use cases in any of the issues or discussions.

[smira]

No, not yet - probably in 1.11.

If you have a feature request, it'd be great to explain it with details - what do you exactly want Talos to do to make Mayastor pick it up, as in general Mayastor should be able to consume raw block devices.

[michaelbeaumont]

The label isn't important, I'm just saying you tell mayastor about the block devices explicitly with a file path: https://openebs.io/docs/user-guides/replicated-storage-user-guide/replicated-pv-mayastor/configuration/rs-create-diskpool

[frezbo]

that's directly specifying the block devices, it doesn't need a partition, we even use such in our tests https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/blob/main/internal/integration/k8s/testdata/openebs-diskpool.yaml

[smira]

So I think both might make sense:

• specifying raw block devices
• make Talos allocate an unformatted volume with some label

We will look into that in 1.11 cycle.

[michaelbeaumont]

specifying raw block devices

Not sure what this is referring to

The core feature request is actually just user volumes but not mounting them to /var/mnt. That's it.

As soon as the partition exists, I can treat the partition like a block device and use it in a Mayastor disk pool. There is one physical disk in my use case.

[Coec0]

We would also like this feature for the same use case. We want to utilize User Volumes to encrypt and unlock the drive, then point Mayastor to the unlocked device to utilize it in a disk pool.

Edit: Do you think this ticket will solve this use case? #10931 Missed that this was already linked here.