Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:11:43 +0100 From: Borja Marcos <BORJAMAR@SARENET.ES> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: ZFS root file system fun, flash USB, swap Message-ID: <0295B0E5-EAE8-4317-A2F8-F93F6F9CCF1E@SARENET.ES>
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Hello, I have a couple of questions, I'm using ZFS on FreeBSD 7.1/amd64. To avoid issues with sharing the disks with ZFS and UFS, I am using a USB pendrive on which I copy the /boot directory. My first problem is: the presence of the /boot/zfs/zpool.cache file is critical. Without it the kernel won't recognise the pool, so it stalls on boot. Is it possible to avoid it? Please note that I'm not using any disk partitioning scheme, I'm creating the pools using the complete disk. / dev/da0, /dev/da1. Somewhere I've read about GEOM provider and a ZFS improvement. Should I partition the disks in a given way so that ZFS would recognise the device? My goal is to have a box of configuration independent boot flash pendrives, with a pretty much generic kernel for different Dell models. But having the pendrives tied to particular machines would be a pain in the ass. As all the Dell machines are not the same, I need generic kernels with support for a pool created over a "mfi" raid5, or using individual disks, etc. Second question. Ivan Voras mentions in his wiki that swap on FreeBSD 7.1 over ZFS doesn't work. The post is from 2007. Is it still _not_ working? It seems that documentation over this issue is very sparse. Regarding the method to create the root filesystem, etc, what I'm doing is: zpool create pool/root zpool create pool/root/usr zpool create pool/root/var zpool create pool/home zpool create pool/whatever From a minimal FreeBSD installed on the flash, tar -c --exclude "./pool/" -f - | ( cd /pool/root && tar xpf -) #with that I have the system files in their proper place I edit the fstab in pool/root/etc so that /, /usr and /var point to pool/root, pool/root/usr and pool/root/var zpool set mountpoint=legacy pool/root For the rest of the datasets I set the proper mountpoints, and boot from the flash with a loader.conf instructing the kernel to get the root file system from "zfs:pool/root". It's quite simple, actually. Borja.
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