From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 7 18:46:48 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF0E514C3D for ; Wed, 7 Apr 1999 18:46:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id LAA17331; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 11:14:39 +0930 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id LAA19850; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 11:14:38 +0930 (CST) Message-ID: <19990408111438.T2142@lemis.com> Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 11:14:38 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Mark Newton Cc: k.stevenson@louisville.edu, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Separate boot partition? References: <19990408095449.F2142@lemis.com> <199904080126.KAA20918@gizmo.internode.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: <199904080126.KAA20918@gizmo.internode.com.au>; from Mark Newton on Thu, Apr 08, 1999 at 10:56:18AM +0930 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thursday, 8 April 1999 at 10:56:18 +0930, Mark Newton wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: > >>> In the case of an extended vinum, would it even be necessary for the boot >>> device to be mounted after the system is running? >> >> No. That's the whole point. The boot partition does not run under >> Vinum, so it's not failure-tolerant. If we needed it, it would be a >> weak point in the implementation. > > With Online Disksuite on Solaris systems you can mirror the root > filesystem; You boot from one of the mirrors as if it's a normal ufs > filesystem, and very soon after booting it does the ODS > configuration stuff to bring mirrors online and remounts root. Right, that was one of the alternatives I was thinking of. I believe there's a problem (probably soluble) that you need to close all fds and start again, since the vnodes would have to change. It might be possible to do without this if Vinum can find its config at attach time. > It means that you may have to boot manually (to pick an alternative > mirror) if your "primary" boot device fails, but you still get the > advantages of mirroring on your root filesystem. Tandem does this automatically by having a number of alternative boot partitions which the autoboot cycles through when trying to boot. > You can't stripe or concatenate it, though. I guess that counts as > a different weak point in the implementation :-) Right, that's the problem I saw as well. Of course, you can stripe or concatenate additional plexes. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message