From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Sep 20 13:33:12 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from fw.wintelcom.net (ns1.wintelcom.net [209.1.153.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 923FE37B424; Wed, 20 Sep 2000 13:33:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from bright@localhost) by fw.wintelcom.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) id e8KKX3X14167; Wed, 20 Sep 2000 13:33:03 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 13:33:03 -0700 From: Alfred Perlstein To: Fred Clift Cc: Edward Elhauge , freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG, grog@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Frustration with SCSI system Message-ID: <20000920133303.I9141@fw.wintelcom.net> References: <200009202024.NAA45822@ns2.uncanny.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.4i In-Reply-To: ; from fclift@verio.net on Wed, Sep 20, 2000 at 02:35:11PM -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org * Fred Clift [000920 13:22] wrote: > If you're willing to go through strange install contortions, you can boot > off of an MFS (Or MD, depending on what version you use ) root filesystem > (copies stored in separate partition, on both disks you are mirroring) and > then have everything else mirrored. Then at least your running system > doesn't rely on any unmirrored disks. You can put a minimal root > filesystem in memory and then have the rest of the stuff moved out via > either symlinks or via just moving things around. Ie if you want to set > up a bunch of boxes, it's nice to have most of the rc bootup stuff really > reside on the vinum'd user... > > At any rate, from what I understand, it's the boot loader that doesn't > understand vinum disks. put a kernel and minimum stuff somewhere the > bootloader can find it and then mirror the rest. If one of the disks goes > out, things keep working (root in memory, usr mirrored) and if you have to > reboot, just make sure the good disk is the preferred boot device in your > scsi bios. [cc'd to Greg Lehey who wrote vinum] Greg, I seem to remeber you being able to boot a vinum root mirror, is there docco anywhere on this? A cursory glance over http://www.vinumvm.org/ doesn't reveal how you were able to pull this off. Another alternative is that for the most part / doesn't need to be writeable with a few small exceptions that can be worked around, even though it requires manual gyrations, one could mount / read-only and make sure to have a spare disk that one syncs with whenever / needs to be changed, the point being if you have hotswap you can simply swap the disks and not loose any changes if you are diligent about syncronising the disks. -Alfred To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message