Le fichier de configuration multipath est divisé selon les sections suivantes :

When the system determines the attributes of a multipath device, first it checks the multipath settings, then the per devices settings, then the multipath system defaults.

The blacklist section of the multipath configuration file specifies the devices that will not be used when the system configures multipath devices. Devices that are blacklisted will not be grouped into a multipath device.

The /etc/multipath.conf configuration file includes a defaults section that sets the user_friendly_names parameter to yes, as follows.

defaults {
        user_friendly_names yes
}

This overwrites the default value of the user_friendly_names parameter.

Le fichier de configuration comprend un modèle de configuration par défaut. Cette section est commentée comme suit.

#defaults {
#       udev_dir                /dev
#       polling_interval        5
#       selector                "round-robin 0"
#       path_grouping_policy    failover
#       getuid_callout          "/lib/dev/scsi_id --whitelisted --device=/dev/%n"
#	prio			const
#	path_checker		directio
#	rr_min_io		1000
#	rr_weight		uniform
#	failback		manual
#	no_path_retry		fail
#	user_friendly_names	no
#}

To overwrite the default value for any of the configuration parameters, you can copy the relevant line from this template into the defaults section and uncomment it. For example, to overwrite the path_grouping_policy parameter so that it is multibus rather than the default value of failover, copy the appropriate line from the template to the initial defaults section of the configuration file, and uncomment it, as follows.

defaults {
        user_friendly_names     yes
        path_grouping_policy    multibus
}

Table Valeurs de configuration par défaut de Multipath describes the attributes that are set in the defaults section of the multipath.conf configuration file. These values are used by DM-Multipath unless they are overwritten by the attributes specified in the devices and multipaths sections of the multipath.conf file.

Table Attributs Multipath shows the attributes that you can set in the multipaths section of the multipath.conf configuration file for each specific multipath device. These attributes apply only to the one specified multipath. These defaults are used by DM-Multipath and override attributes set in the defaults and devices sections of the multipath.conf file.

In addition, the following parameters may be overridden in this multipath section

The following example shows multipath attributes specified in the configuration file for two specific multipath devices. The first device has a WWID of 3600508b4000156d70001200000b0000 and a symbolic name of yellow.

The second multipath device in the example has a WWID of 1DEC_____321816758474 and a symbolic name of red. In this example, the rr_weight attributes are set to priorities.

multipaths {
       multipath {
              wwid                  3600508b4000156d70001200000b0000
              alias                 yellow
              path_grouping_policy  multibus
              path_selector         "round-robin 0"
              failback              manual
              rr_weight             priorities
              no_path_retry         5
       }
       multipath {
              wwid                  1DEC_____321816758474
              alias                 red
              rr_weight             priorities
        }
}

Table Attributs du périphérique shows the attributes that you can set for each individual storage device in the devices section of the multipath.conf configuration file. These attributes are used by DM-Multipath unless they are overwritten by the attributes specified in the multipaths section of the multipath.conf file for paths that contain the device. These attributes override the attributes set in the defaults section of the multipath.conf file.

Many devices that support multipathing are included by default in a multipath configuration. The values for the devices that are supported by default are listed in the multipath.conf.defaults file. You probably will not need to modify the values for these devices, but if you do you can overwrite the default values by including an entry in the configuration file for the device that overwrites those values. You can copy the device configuration defaults from the multipath.conf.annotated.gz or if you wish to have a brief config file, multipath.conf.synthetic file for the device and override the values that you want to change.

To add a device to this section of the configuration file that is not configured automatically by default, you must set the vendor and product parameters. You can find these values by looking at /sys/block/device_name/device/vendor and /sys/block/device_name/device/model where device_name is the device to be multipathed, as in the following example:

# cat /sys/block/sda/device/vendor
WINSYS  
# cat /sys/block/sda/device/model
SF2372

The additional parameters to specify depend on your specific device. If the device is active/active, you will usually not need to set additional parameters. You may want to set path_grouping_policy to multibus. Other parameters you may need to set are no_path_retry and rr_min_io, as described in Table Attributs Multipath.

If the device is active/passive, but it automatically switches paths with I/O to the passive path, you need to change the checker function to one that does not send I/O to the path to test if it is working (otherwise, your device will keep failing over). This almost always means that you set the path_checker to tur; this works for all SCSI devices that support the Test Unit Ready command, which most do.

If the device needs a special command to switch paths, then configuring this device for multipath requires a hardware handler kernel module. The current available hardware handler is emc. If this is not sufficient for your device, you may not be able to configure the device for multipath.

En outre, les paramètres suivants peuvent être remplacés dans la section périphérique

# echo scsi_dh_alua >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules  ## append module to file
# update-initramfs -u -k all

The following example shows a device entry in the multipath configuration file.

#devices {
#	device {
#		vendor			"COMPAQ  "
#		product			"MSA1000         "
#		path_grouping_policy	multibus
#		path_checker		tur
#		rr_weight		priorities
#	}
#}

The spacing reserved in the vendor, product, and revision fields are significant as multipath is performing a direct match against these attributes, whose format is defined by the SCSI specification, specifically the Standard INQUIRY command. When quotes are used, the vendor, product, and revision fields will be interpreted strictly according to the spec. Regular expressions may be integrated into the quoted strings. Should a field be defined without the requisite spacing, multipath will copy the string into the properly sized buffer and pad with the appropriate number of spaces. The specification expects the entire field to be populated by printable characters or spaces, as seen in the example above

To create a more robust configuration file, regular expressions can also be used. Operators include ^ $ [ ] . * ? +. Examples of functional regular expressions can be found by examining the live multipath database and multipath.conf example files found in /usr/share/doc/multipath-tools/examples:

# echo 'show config' | multipathd -k