From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 7 11:55:33 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6BE6516A420 for ; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:55:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from volker@vwsoft.com) Received: from gwfra.elbekies.net (tce71.tce85.de [195.145.102.20]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B9F1E43D46 for ; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:55:32 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from volker@vwsoft.com) Received-SPF: pass (gwfra.elbekies.net: domain of vwsoft.com designates 212.23.126.2 as permitted sender) client-ip=212.23.126.2; envelope-from=volker@vwsoft.com; helo=mail.vtec.ipme.de; Received: from mail.vtec.ipme.de (gprs-pool-1-002.eplus-online.de [212.23.126.2]) by gwfra.elbekies.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1545E1702F for ; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 12:55:25 +0100 (CET) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (unknown [192.168.201.3]) by mail.vtec.ipme.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id CC7F75C4F; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 12:55:19 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <440D74B3.3030309@vwsoft.com> Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:55:31 +0100 From: Volker User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Thunderbird/1.0.6 Mnenhy/0.6.0.101 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: JoaoBR X-Enigmail-Version: 0.94.0.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-VWSoft-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-TarmacIntl-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-From: volker@vwsoft.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fresh install on gmirror'ed disks? 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, 07 Mar 2006 11:55:33 -0000 > On Friday 03 March 2006 23:45, Mark Kirkwood wrote: >> > >> > I would certainly see the installer handling software RAID as a >> > considerable benefit. >> > >> > From what I've seen on the net, to install and boot off RAIDed syst= em >> > disks is quite fiddly (maybe gmirror is the exception here, as I've >> > mainly been looking at striping). >> > >> > Cheers >> > >> > Mark >=20 > geom changed this complications definitely, using gmirror or gstripe co= mmands=20 > is easy as copying a file. Probably one of the most important things th= at=20 > with vinum as example it was not possible to mirror a root partition bu= t=20 > since gmirror places the metadata different we can have now a mirrored = and=20 > bootable root partition. Striping with ccd and vinum or mirroring was=20 > certainly a pain even if it worked then stable and reliable. So in comp= arism=20 > the easy use of geom is great and the people which developed geom did a= =20 > really fantastic job. >=20 > Jo=E3o >=20 Joao, I do agree that gmirror is not that bad and not that difficult. But take a look at how to setup a fresh system using gmirror (slice by slice mirroring): - install a complete system to a fresh disc - create the (well sized) slices on a 2nd disc (not that easy) - create the gmirror set on disc 2 - bring gmirror up - copy all filesystems over to the gmirror set - reboot - create exactly sized slices on disc 1 - insert everything into the gmirror set Using that procedure you're going to copy each installed file three times (install, copy to mirror, sync mirror). That's a waste of time compared to a solution where the installer would be able to install directly into a mirror. When using disc based gmirror (instead of per slice gmirror) the procedure is a bit easier, but similar. If one could create a gmirror set before installing the base system and tell the installer to install into gmX instead of adX/daX, the whole procedure would be much easier and would take less time. I've had to setup a handful of fresh systems over the last months and it was a pain to manually setup gmirror on each fresh system. Greetings, Volker