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Date:      Fri, 02 Feb 2001 13:20:01 +1100
From:      Tony Landells <ahl@austclear.com.au>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        Randy Primeaux <randy@Cloudfactory.ORG>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: installing onto vinum 
Message-ID:  <200102020220.NAA07673@tungsten.austclear.com.au>
In-Reply-To: Message from Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>  of "Fri, 02 Feb 2001 11:55:43 %2B1030." <20010202115543.A82163@wantadilla.lemis.com> 

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On Friday,  2 February 2001 at 11:55:43 +1030, Greg Lehey wrote:

> In fact, in my original instructions I specified single user mode so
> that you wouldn't need to mount everything.  In particular, you'll
> probably have trouble changing the swap partition if it's mounted.
> You should do, anyway.

I mounted everything so I had access to, for example, vi.  Also so that
/ get's remounted read/write instead of read-only (for when I want to
change /etc/fstab).

Swap isn't a problem because it doesn't get "mounted"--it's added by
"swapon".

I found that if I didn't do this, if I started vinum interactively and
then typed "create", I'd get the message:

	Can't open ate: No such file or directory

> > 8 partitions:
> > #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
> >   a:   524288        0    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0 - 32*)
> >   b:  1048576   524288      swap                        # (Cyl.   32*- 97*)
> >   c: 90060327        0    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 5605*)
> >   d: 88487463  1572864     vinum                        # (Cyl.   97*- 5605*)
> >   e:   524288  1573129    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.   97*- 130*)
> >   f:  8388608  2097417    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  130*- 652*)
> >   g: 79574302 10486025    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  652*- 5605*)
> 
> Partitions b, d and e look to me as if you have taken the 265 sectors
> off the beginning of partition e rather than the end of partition b.
> I suspect you just allocated 1048841 sectors to swap on the initial
> install, rather than the more logical 1048576.  For other readers,
> it's very important that you don't move the start of any of the file
> system partitions.  You can pretty much do what you want with swap.

It looks okay to me--this is the label after adding the vinum partition.
Compared to the sysinstall label from the original post:

>> 8 partitions:
>> #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
>>   a:   524288        0    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0 - 32*)
>>   b:  1048841   524288      swap                        # (Cyl.   32*- 97*)
>>   c: 90060327        0    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 
5605*)
>>   e:   524288  1573129    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.   97*- 130*)
>>   f:  8388608  2097417    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  130*- 652*)
>>   g: 79574302 10486025    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  652*- 
5605*)

it looks to me like he reduced the size of 'b' by 265 sectors, and the
offsets of the following partitions haven't moved...

> All correct, but I'd be inclined to specify it exactly.

The only one I'd be inclined to specify exactly is the 265s for the
first volume, since that's a vinum "magic number".

My concern in specifying the following offsets is that I'm more likely
to make an arithmetic error (either due to stupidity, fatigue, or a typo)
with pretty ugly results than vinum is.

> > 		"dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0s1d count=265"
> 
> Hmm, what have you seen here?  About the only thing vinum objects to
> (not gets confused by) is if you try to change the name of the drive.
> This is a feature, not a bug, designed to stop you from accidentally
> creating a drive on the wrong spindle, and you can get round it with
> "create -f configfile".

This is the stuff I was telling you about where I kept getting:
	vinum -> create
	   1: drive d1 device /dev/ad2s1d
	** 1:   Invalid argument

After playing with the BIOS settings a LOT to see if it was hardware
related, I found that once it started happening it didn't matter what
the BIOS said (for others--I've been having an interesting time getting
my two mirror disks in a HP Vectra VL400 both listed by FreeBSD 4.2 as
UDMA66).

It's possible that somewhere along the line I'd "dd"ed the vinum data
from the first disk to the second (as part of trying to just initialise
the second from the first without having to go through several different
tools) or something.  Anyway, I found that zeroing out the first 265
sectors of the vinum partition fixed the problem.  I didn't try "create -f".

I'm not sure that I understand what "creating a drive on the wrong
spindle" means...

> > 	2. When you create and attach the second plex for a mirror
> > 	(assuming that's where you're going), it (and its sub-disks)
> > 	will come up as (apparently) faulty.  This only indicates that
> > 	it doesn't have current data on and can't be used.  Once you
> > 	"start" the sub-disks they will copy the data from the first
> > 	plex, and when that's finished the plex will come up.
> 
> Yes, that one's in the man page.

I know it's there--but when you're just starting out, sometimes you
still get thrown by things that are very clearly spelled out in the
man page.

I think it's having the plexes come up as "faulty" (rather than, say,
"stale" as the sub-disks do) that makes me jumpy.

And the man page prints out as 25 pages, which is a lot to get through
and comprehend.  Don't get me wrong--your documentation is some of the
best I've ever had to use (both this and "The Complete FreeBSD") and
covers in 25 pages what similar (commercial) offerings would require
volumes for.  But there isn't a "quick start" that takes a first timer
through the steps, so I was just trying to give Randy a "heads up".

Vinum rules.

Tony
-- 
Tony Landells					<ahl@austclear.com.au>
Senior Network Engineer				Ph:  +61 3 9677 9319
Australian Clearing Services Pty Ltd		Fax: +61 3 9677 9355
Level 4, Rialto North Tower
525 Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia




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