Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 26 Sep 2000 19:42:13 +0200
From:      Alexander Maret <maret@atrada.net>
To:        'Keith Kemp' <kkemp@nwcr.net>
Cc:        "'freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   AW: Frustration with SCSI system
Message-ID:  <58A002A02C5ED311812E0050044517F00D25F0@erlangen01.atrada.de>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> -----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Keith Kemp [mailto:kkemp@nwcr.net]
> Gesendet: Freitag, 22. September 2000 00:29
> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG; freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG
> Betreff: RE: Frustration with SCSI system
> 
> 
> On the topic of Vinum, what do you guys do about the / 
> partion since it
> appears that a vinum partion can not be the boot partion.

We have a system here with two SCSI disks using vinum RAID1
to mirror them. To ensure that we can boot the system even
of a / failure on the first disk. There is copy of the
root partition on the second disk, so we can boot the system
even if the first hd fails completely. As we don't want to copy
the contents of the / partition on the first disk to the second
disk on every change we do on it, we also mirror /etc. So
there is nothing left on the root partition which changes
regulary.

Mirroring the /etc partition is a bit tricky, because you
need some files at startup. On a 3.3-Stable system the only
files you really need until /etc is remounted as a mirrored
drive are:

defaults/rc.conf
rc.conf
fstab
gettytab
login.conf
rc
ttys

This shouldn't have changed until know.
As you also want to be able to change these files when you
remounted /etc I have hardlinks to these files in an /ETC
directory. On the remounted /etc directory softlinks then
point to the files in /ETC.
In my opinion this is the smartest solution you get with
vinum. You only have to copy the contents of the / partition
of the first disk to the second disk if you change any of
the files listed above or if you install a new kernel/new
release of FreeBSD.
 
Sorry for my bad english.


Alexander Maret


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?58A002A02C5ED311812E0050044517F00D25F0>