ggatel(8)

ggatel8

Geom gate local control utility

Usage

ggatel create [-v] [-o -option] ... [-s sectorsize] [-t timeout] [-u unit] path

ggatel destroy [-f] -u unit

ggatel list [-v] [-u unit]

ggatel rescue [-v] [-o -option] ... -u unit path

Overview

The ggatel utility is a local GEOM Gate class consumer. It can be used as a replacement for md(4) devices or as a “GEOMificator” for non GEOM-aware devices, but it was mainly created as an example on how to use and how to communicate with the GEOM Gate kernel subsystem.

Available commands:

create

Create a ggate provider related to the given regular file or device.

destroy

Destroy the given ggate provider.

list

List ggate providers.

rescue

Take over a previously created provider and handle pending and future requests. This is useful if the initial ggatel process died. To prevent data loss, the given path must lead to the regular file or device that was used to create the provider.

Available options:

-f

Forcibly destroy ggate provider (cancels all pending requests).

-o option

Specify permissions and options to use when opening the file or device.

ro

read-only

wo

write-only

rw

read-write

direct

open with O_DIRECT option on the file

Default is rw.

-s sectorsize

Sector size for ggate provider. If not specified, it is taken from the device, or set to 512 bytes for files.

-t timeout

Number of seconds to wait before an I/O request will be canceled. 0 means no timeout. Default is 30.

-u unit

Unit number to use.

-v

Do not fork, run in foreground and print debug information on standard output.

path

Path to a regular file or device.

Exit status

Exit status is 0 on success, or 1 if the command fails. To get details about the failure, ggatel should be called with the -v option.

Releases

52 releases since FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE; the text changed 34 times.

  1. 5.3–5.5
  2. 6.0–6.3
  3. 6.4
  4. 7.0
  5. 7.1
  6. 7.2
  7. 7.3
  8. 7.4
  9. 8.0
  10. 8.1
  11. 8.2
  12. 8.3
  13. 8.4
  14. 9.0
  15. 9.1
  16. 9.2
  17. 9.3
  18. 10.0
  19. 10.1
  20. 10.2
  21. 10.3
  22. 10.4
  23. 11.0
  24. 11.1
  25. 11.2
  26. 11.3
  27. 11.4
  28. 12.0
  29. 12.1
  30. 12.2
  31. 12.3
  32. 12.4
  33. 13.0–13.2
  34. 13.3–14.5
  35. 15.0–16.0

-o since FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE.

-q until FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE.

History

The ggatel utility appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

Authors

The ggatel utility as well as this manual page was written by Pawel Jakub Dawidek ⟨[email protected]⟩.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.