From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 22 18:05:01 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: 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 E901C16A49A for ; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:05:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jfalconer@puc.edu) Received: from ecf2.puc.edu (ecf2.puc.edu [67.134.132.32]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68BF543D83 for ; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:05:00 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jfalconer@puc.edu) Received: from localhost (jfalconer@localhost) by ecf2.puc.edu (8.11.6/8.10.1) with ESMTP id k5MI4w609300 for ; Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:04:58 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:04:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Jon Falconer To: questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Subject: problem creating filesystem snapshot 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, 22 Jun 2006 18:05:02 -0000 Greetings, I needed to dump the partitions on a running FreeBSD 6.1R system so I could duplicate them on a test server. The server is a Dell 2850 with the PERC 4e/Di RAID controller with 5 x 73GB disk array. So I thought I would try using the snapshot feature. I used the mksnap_ffs to create a snapshot of a 20GB partition. The command completed in about 15 - 20 seconds. I was then able to run dump against the new snap file and all seemed ok. I then tried the same thing on a 225GB partition. The mksnap_ffs command took over 30 minutes to complete. But every access to that partition after that just hung. I wanted to see the size of the snap file so I typed ls -l /home/.snap (where I had told mksnap_ffs to put the snap file) and it hung. Same thing from several logins. I figured I would have to reset the box so I typed sync, and that hung. All the time, access to other partitions was just fine (/, /usr, /var). All partitions (except /) were created with soft update enables (default when installing.) The questions. Is there anything magic about the /xxx/.snap directory in each partition? When I created the snap file for the 20GB partition, I did not put it inside the /xxx/.snap directory, and it worked fine. Is there some partition size restrictions? Thank you for your thoughts, Jon