From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jun 11 04:37:41 2005 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 282D216A41C for ; Sat, 11 Jun 2005 04:37:41 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from derekm.nospam@rogers.com) Received: from smtp100.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com (smtp100.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com [206.190.36.78]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A3FBE43D48 for ; Sat, 11 Jun 2005 04:37:40 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from derekm.nospam@rogers.com) Received: (qmail 56780 invoked from network); 11 Jun 2005 04:37:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO server.razorfever.net) (plick@rogers.com@70.25.112.61 with plain) by smtp100.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com with SMTP; 11 Jun 2005 04:37:39 -0000 Received: from [192.168.0.254] ([192.168.0.254]) by server.razorfever.net (8.13.3/8.13.1) with ESMTP id j5B4bcMr093833 for ; Sat, 11 Jun 2005 00:37:38 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from derekm.nospam@rogers.com) Message-ID: <42AA6AB3.5020103@rogers.com> Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 00:38:11 -0400 From: Derek User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20050404) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@freebsd.org References: <20050610142559.S78603@mail.goinet.com> <20050610160943.T98548@wonkity.com> In-Reply-To: <20050610160943.T98548@wonkity.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.85/924/Fri Jun 10 17:42:16 2005 on server.razorfever.net X-Virus-Status: Clean Cc: Subject: Re: system cloning 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: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 04:37:41 -0000 Warren Block wrote: > On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Tony Shadwick wrote: > >> I have a system that we are running in production that there was an >> oversight on, and it has a single hard drive installed (32GB SCSI I >> believe), rather than a 3 drive raid5 array. We would like to correct >> this, but we have all sorts of up-to-date packages and config files >> that we've tweaked that we would hate to just start over on it. > > > Surprisingly, nobody mentioned the FAQ entry yet: > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#NEW-HUGE-DISK > > > I usually just do a minimal install on the new disk, then restore onto it. > This is totally the way to go for what you want to do. I've done this time and time again without fail. Provided you can afford enough down-time to do the dump procedure. I would install and configure the RAID array, and boot FreeBSD in single-user mode off the old disk. (single-user mode may not be necessary because of snapshots, but being a database guy, I like to be paranoid about consistancy) Create a slice and write the standard boot block to the new array (using sysinstall is a snap). Partition the slice appropriately, with disklabel or sysinstall. Do you dumps. Then modify your fstab entries on the array. The walkthrough above guides you through most of this. You'll keep all your wierd filesystem stuff like hard/soft links devices, flags, etc... I've done this going from a single disk to RAID array. From RAID 1 to RAID 5, a single disk to a bigger disk. It works well, and painlessly when you follow that walkthrough. Cheers, Derek