From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 27 16:49:48 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8BE541065672 for ; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:49:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from tim.des.no (tim.des.no [194.63.250.121]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E1978FC08 for ; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:49:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from ds4.des.no (des.no [84.49.246.2]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id 12D806D43F; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:49:47 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ds4.des.no (Postfix, from userid 1001) id E779D8449F; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:49:46 +0100 (CET) From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= To: "Peter Steele" References: <2ACA3DE8F9758A48B8BE2C7A847F91F240CE6B@polaris.maxiscale.com> <20081126153510.6062cd55@bhuda.mired.org> <2ACA3DE8F9758A48B8BE2C7A847F91F240CE99@polaris.maxiscale.com> <20081126190545.17b79195@bhuda.mired.org> <2ACA3DE8F9758A48B8BE2C7A847F91F240CEB4@polaris.maxiscale.com> <861vwx4fd5.fsf@ds4.des.no> <2ACA3DE8F9758A48B8BE2C7A847F91F240CEBF@polaris.maxiscale.com> Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:49:46 +0100 In-Reply-To: <2ACA3DE8F9758A48B8BE2C7A847F91F240CEBF@polaris.maxiscale.com> (Peter Steele's message of "Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:19:18 -0800") Message-ID: <86myfl15cl.fsf@ds4.des.no> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.60 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Mike Meyer Subject: Re: FreeBSD boot menu is missing X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:49:48 -0000 "Peter Steele" writes: > Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav writes: > > Mirroring the entire slice is far simpler. If you mirror individual > > partitions, you have to label them *before* you newfs them. > What we're really trying to accomplish is an automated install via a > PXE boot server. Unfortunately gmirror isn't available in mfsroot at > the point the file systems need to be set up. So what we've ended up > doing is doing is what amounts to a bootstrap install on the first > disk, and then after the installCommit is done, gmirror is available > and we have a post install script that runs gmirror on the other > drives. Then the script copies the OS slice over to the gmirrored fs, > reboots to this mirrored system, and finally adds the original disk to > the mirror. It's fully automated and gives us a mirrored OS slice > across four drives, and we even handle drives of different sizes. Exactly. So what you do, instead, is make sure there is a little space left over at the end of the slice that you create in the first step. Then, once gmirror is available, you gmirror label the slice, then gmirror insert the corresponding slice on the other disk(s), and gmirror rebuild. No copying involved; gmirror takes care of it all. The key here is that 'gmirror label' is non-destructive as long as the last sector on the provider is unused. > FreeBSD doesn't handle hot swap very well we've discovered, not unless > you are using a RAID based backplane and drives. It does, AFAIK, even on SATA, provided the controller supports it and is configured correctly. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no