From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 31 11:25:25 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D1E8B16A4DF for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:25:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jonathan@hst.org.za) Received: from sirian.hst.org.za (sirian.hst.org.za [209.203.2.130]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0DE8843D67 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:25:17 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jonathan@hst.org.za) Received: from localhost (localhost.hst.org.za [127.0.0.1]) by sirian.hst.org.za (Postfix) with ESMTP id B13C631CF3A for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:23:27 +0200 (SAST) Received: from sirian.hst.org.za ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (sirian.hst.org.za [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 73319-01 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:23:27 +0200 (SAST) Received: by sirian.hst.org.za (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 3309E31CF2F; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:23:27 +0200 (SAST) Received: from sysadmin.int.dbn.hst.org.za (sysadmin.int.dbn.hst.org.za [10.1.1.20]) by sirian.hst.org.za (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D20831CF11 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:23:26 +0200 (SAST) From: Jonathan McKeown Organization: Health Systems Trust To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:25:04 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.7.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200608311325.04759.jonathan@hst.org.za> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.61 (1.212.2.1-2003-12-09-exp) on sirian.hst.org.za X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.9 required=7.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=2.61 X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at hst.org.za Subject: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror? 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: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:25:25 -0000 I'm setting up a remote server with two identical hard drives, running FreeBSD-6.1. I want to set the drives up as a mirror for data redundancy. I also want to be able to break the mirror when I need to update the OS or installed software, so that if anything goes wrong with the update on one drive I can boot back to the other one, or if all is well, re-establish the mirror and synchronise to the updated system. I have serial console access including BIOS console redirection. Based on web and Usenet/mailing list searches, gmirror looks more straightforward for this simple case, gvinum more flexible but poorly documented, and the most recent comments I can find (still all 6+ months ago) seem to suggest that gvinum hasn't completely stabilised for production yet. Is this a fair assessment? Are there any factors I've missed? Which solution is likely to suit the situation better? Jonathan