From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Nov 14 16:40:27 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9AF63106566C for ; Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:40:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lopez.on.the.lists@yellowspace.net) Received: from mail.yellowspace.net (mail.yellowspace.net [80.190.200.164]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C70E8FC0A for ; Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:40:26 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.178.21] ([85.181.139.246]) (AUTH: CRAM-MD5 lopez.on.the.lists@yellowspace.net, TLS: TLSv1/SSLv3, 128bits, AES128-SHA) by mail.yellowspace.net with esmtp; Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:30:20 +0100 id 0036A172.000000004AFEDB1C.0000BC5B From: Lorenzo Perone Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:30:09 +0100 Message-Id: <1A8F306A-8749-471B-94EA-FC8435A30C34@yellowspace.net> To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1076) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1076) Subject: gmirroring slices X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:40:27 -0000 Hello, I was wondering if anyone could give me an advice on how viable and reliable it is, to use gmirror on a slice of an MBR-style partitioned disk, and use the second slice(s) within a zpool. I remember a discussion here on where metadata is kept (always at the end of the disk as opposed to the end of the given consumer?), so I wasn't sure about how much of a good idea this might be. The reason I'd like to have it like this is, that I had mixed bad experiences in the effort of using ZFS as a boot and root volume, so I'd rather keep a traditional slice for booting/rooting, and a zpool for the production jails on that machine. The example would be provider: mirror/gm0 consumers: ad6s1 and ad8s1 zpool mirror made out of ad6s2 and ad8s2 while experimenting, I got into the problem that gmirror label -v -b round-robin gm0 ad6s1 got a permission denied (even with sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16/17). Any hints on what can cause this (I might have screwed up something with fdisk/bsdlabel, but after doublechecking I wonder what it could be..) Is a GPT partition table better for this (I got further with another machine by using GPT partitions)? Thanx for any advice. Regards, Lorenzo