From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 2 10:12:10 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CB37106564A for ; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 10:12:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from 000.fbsd@quip.cz) Received: from elsa.codelab.cz (elsa.codelab.cz [94.124.105.4]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 527268FC12 for ; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 10:12:08 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from 000.fbsd@quip.cz) Received: from localhost (localhost.codelab.cz [127.0.0.1]) by elsa.codelab.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1EA4819E045; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:12:05 +0200 (CEST) Received: from [192.168.1.2] (r5bb235.net.upc.cz [86.49.61.235]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by elsa.codelab.cz (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 9246319E044; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:11:59 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <4A24FAF0.2020603@quip.cz> Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:12:00 +0200 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 X-Accept-Language: cz, cs, en, en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Daniel O'Connor References: <20090602095228.8ff3654c.gerrit@pmp.uni-hannover.de> <200906021845.33739.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> In-Reply-To: <200906021845.33739.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Dan Naumov , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ZFS NAS configuration question X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:12:10 -0000 Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On Tue, 2 Jun 2009, Dan Naumov wrote: > >>USB root partition for booting off UFS is something I have >>considered. I have looked around and it seems that all the "install >>FreeBSD onto USB stick" guides seem to involve a lot of manual work >>from a fixit environment, does sysinstall not recognise USB drives as >>a valid disk device to parition/label/install FreeBSD on? If I do go >>with an USB boot/root, what things I should absolutely keep on it and >>which are "safe" to move to a ZFS pool? The idea is that in case my >>ZFS configuration goes bonkers for some reason, I still have a fully >>workable singleuser configuration to boot from for recovery. > > > It should see them as SCSI disks, note that if you plug them in after > the installer boots you will need to go into Options and tell it to > rescan the devices. > > >>I haven't really used USB flash for many years, but I remember when >>they first started appearing on the shelves, they got well known for >>their horrible reliability (stick would die within a year of use, >>etc). Have they improved to the point of being good enough to host a >>root partition on, without having to setup some crazy GEOM mirror >>setup using 2 of them? > > > I would expect one to last a long time if you only use it for /boot and > use ZFS for the rest (or even just moving /var onto ZFS would save > heaps of writes). I am using this setup (booting from USB with UFS) in our backup storage server with FreeBSD 7.2 + ZFS. 2GB USB flash disk contains normal installation of the whole system, but is set to read only in fstab. ZFS is used for /tmp /var /usr/ports /usr/src /usr/obj and storage. root filesystem is remounted read write only for some configuration changes, then remounted back to read only. Miroslav Lachman # df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ufs/2gLive 1.6G 863M 642M 57% / devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev tank 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tank tank/system 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tank/system tank/system/usr 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tank/system/usr tank/system/tmp 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tmp tank/system/usr/obj 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /usr/obj tank/system/usr/ports 1.1T 218M 1.1T 0% /usr/ports tank/system/usr/ports/distfiles 1.1T 108M 1.1T 0% /usr/ports/distfiles tank/system/usr/ports/packages 1.1T 125M 1.1T 0% /usr/ports/packages tank/system/usr/src 1.1T 171M 1.1T 0% /usr/src tank/system/var 1.1T 256K 1.1T 0% /var tank/system/var/db 1.1T 716M 1.1T 0% /var/db tank/system/var/db/pkg 1.1T 384K 1.1T 0% /var/db/pkg tank/system/var/log 1.1T 45M 1.1T 0% /var/log tank/system/var/run 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /var/run tank/vol0 2.6T 1.5T 1.1T 57% /vol0 tank/vol0/mon 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /vol0/mon (some filesystems are using compression, that's why ports and var are splitted in to more filesystems)