From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Dec 17 09:09:19 2004 Return-Path: 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 57C2416A4CE for ; Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:09:19 +0000 (GMT) Received: from websomi.sominfo.hu (websomi.sominfo.hu [213.163.15.135]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EEF4443D54 for ; Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:09:17 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from at@sominfo.hu) Received: from [10.0.0.104] (helo=[10.0.0.104]) by websomi.sominfo.hu with asmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1CfE93-0005it-00 for ; Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:11:29 +0100 Message-ID: <41C2A236.3080403@sominfo.hu> Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:09:10 +0100 From: Andriko Tamas User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Understanding vinum (bootstrapped vinum) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:09:19 -0000 Hi, I'd like to setup a brand new server with 2 pieces of 120GB SATA HDD. So i have decided I'd like to mirror the entire space of these disks with vinum. (including root) I've goggling documentations for accomplish this, and i have find some documents. This is some link. http://devel.reinikainen.net/docs/how-to/Vinum/. Bootstrapping Vinum by Robert A. Van Valzah An introduction to Vinum on FreeBSD by Rocky Chapter 13 of the FreeBSD handbook: The Vinum Volume Manager, originally written by Greg Lehey. Vinum HOWTO for two mirrored disks, by mic at netbase dot org Chapter 12 of O'Reilly's The Complete FreeBSD: The Vinum Volume Manager Replacing a failed Vinum drive . Man vinum[4|8] These are very clear documentations, but one thing have left what i couldn't understand. The documents recommend me to make a vinum bsd partition on the root spindle with a 16 blocks offset, and then make vinum volumes as i like, but they are warned me to make a fake root "a" partition to remain bootable my OS. (and don't forget the extra 265 block space for vinum header). That is ok. The problem is why do i have to allocate the 16 block at the beginning of the slice? (because of vinum will cut into bootstrapping. That was the explaining) Ok its understandable, but what about that situation when the disklabel on the first slice looks like this: # /dev/ad0s1: 8 partitions: # size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg] a: 2097152 1048576 4.2BSD 0 0 0 b: 1048576 0 swap c: 12715857 0 unused 0 0 # "raw" part, don't edit d: 2097152 3145728 4.2BSD 0 0 0 e: 1048576 5242880 4.2BSD 0 0 0 f: 6424401 6291456 4.2BSD 0 0 0 As it shows the "b" swap partition is located at the 0 offset . So this partition doesn't cut into bootstrapping, and if not, why not? Sorry for my english, and the long theoretical mail, but i'd like to collect as information as possible, because it will worst the effort when i find myself a data loss situation. Thanks for any idea. Andriko Tamas