From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 4 17:39:41 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0F9C0106564A for ; Fri, 4 Jun 2010 17:39:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from clarkp@mtmary.edu) Received: from smtp.mtmary.edu (famine.mtmary.edu [74.62.87.83]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5CAC8FC19 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 2010 17:39:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.100.1.36] (war.mtmary.edu [172.16.0.200]) by smtp.mtmary.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id CA0291704B for ; Fri, 4 Jun 2010 12:39:39 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <4C093A5B.4040705@mtmary.edu> Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:39:39 -0500 From: Peter Clark User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Thunderbird/3.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Some GMirror questions. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:39:41 -0000 Hello All, There are a number of gmirror resources available online but there are a few discrepancies. I thought someone here might be able to shed some light on them. Also, this is on FreeBSD 8.0 RELEASE. Does creating the mirror need to be done from a Livefs CD (in Fixit mode) or can it be done directly from the OS? The Handbook makes no reference to things like: # Install FreeBSD on to ad0. # Reboot with the Install CD. # Enter Fixit mode. chroot /dist mount -t devfs devfs /dev gmirror load gmirror label -v -b round-robin gm0 /dev/ad0 mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1a /mnt echo geom_mirror_load="YES" >> /mnt/boot/loader.conf It just indicates jumping right in with gmirror label from the OS (at least it seems to). Also, these next 2 entries in /etc/rc.conf. The Handbook does not make any mention of them. The way the authors state their purpose it would seem as though that should be done in all cases of disk mirroring. Is that true? # tell the system that the swap file will be on a mirror, not a raw drive. echo ’swapoff=”YES”‘ >> /mnt/etc/rc.conf # need to do this to make dumping cores happy since it won’t use a gmirror’ed drive dumpdev=”NO” Lastly, I know at one point the 'load' algorithm had some performance problems and people were saying to only use 'round-robin'. It seems as though some code was committed back in Dec 2009 to fix it's this. Is there a practical rule of thumb to using 'load' vs 'round-robin'? Is this an accurate way to look at it? "Round-robin because if you have two disks in a mirror, they’re both under the same 'load' constraints, and it is best to KISS." Cheers, Peter