Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:52:50 +0200 From: Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass@gmx.com> To: Alan Gutierrez <alan@prettyrobots.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Journaling for a flaky FreeBSD VirtualBox guest. Message-ID: <512F6132.8030903@gmx.com> In-Reply-To: <20130228074139.GA34940@gmail.com> References: <20130228074139.GA34940@gmail.com>
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On 28/2/2013 9:41 πμ, Alan Gutierrez wrote: > I'm getting to know FreeBSD by running a 64-bit FreeBSD guest in a VirtualBox > machine on my OS X Mountain Lion laptop. On occasion, when waking up from sleep, > the FreeBSD virtual machine will not restart. VirtualBox marks it as "Aborted." Maybe you should pause the guest before putting the host to sleep? > > When I restart FreeBSD, I've found on a number of occasions that the `.git` > directory of the project I was working on when my laptop went to sleep has > become corrupted. `git` won't recognize the directory. I try to rebuild the > repository with `git fsck`, but it's usually broken. My `.zsh_history` file has > been corrupted at restart, which I've recovered by removing the last line which > contains binary nonsense. > > I run a Linux guest that suffers the same abuse, but does not lose data. > > My question: > > If anyone runs FreeBSD in VirtualBox, what VirtualBox settings do you use so > that UFS will work correctly and recover recent writes? > > I'm using UFS built by the install media. > > % mount > /dev/ada0p2 on / (ufs, local, journaled soft-updates) > devfs on /dev (devfs, local, multilabel) > > I'm using the disk and disk controller setup that VirtualBox suggested when when > I told it I was building a FreeBSD machine. A single IDE drive on an IDE > controller with "Use host I/O cache enabled." The VirtualBox documentation says > that a virtual SATA controller is preferred if you choose to uncheck "Use host > I/O cache enabled." > > http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#iocaching > > So... > > * How should I configure my filesystem for maximum durability, since the > VirtualBox virtual drives appear to be flaky? I think geom_journal will serve you better for this purpose. Geom journal records everything, that is data and metadata changes. I have used geom journal on my freebsd-current box and it has stood tenths of kernel panics and a few power-offs without a single failure. I haven't researched about the type of controller or other settings since it was never needed to. Occasional full fscks never revealed corruption. Just my 2 cents, HTH, Nikos
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