Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 12:58:11 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Tony Landells <ahl@austclear.com.au> Cc: Randy Primeaux <randy@Cloudfactory.ORG>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: installing onto vinum Message-ID: <20010202125811.G82163@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <200102020220.NAA07673@tungsten.austclear.com.au>; from ahl@austclear.com.au on Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 01:20:01PM %2B1100 References: <grog@lemis.com> <200102020220.NAA07673@tungsten.austclear.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] Your mailer is wrapping long lines. On Friday, 2 February 2001 at 13:20:01 +1100, Tony Landells wrote: > On Friday, 2 February 2001 at 11:55:43 +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: > >> In fact, in my original instructions I specified single user mode so >> that you wouldn't need to mount everything. In particular, you'll >> probably have trouble changing the swap partition if it's mounted. >> You should do, anyway. > > I mounted everything so I had access to, for example, vi. Also so that > / get's remounted read/write instead of read-only (for when I want to > change /etc/fstab). > > Swap isn't a problem because it doesn't get "mounted"--it's added by > "swapon". Ah, OK. Yes, it's convenient to have an editor :-) I would probably have only mounted /usr, though. > I found that if I didn't do this, if I started vinum interactively and > then typed "create", I'd get the message: > > Can't open ate: No such file or directory I can't reproduce this. It should start an editor for you. Can you show me the vinum_history output? >>> 8 partitions: >>> # size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg] >>> a: 524288 0 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 0 - 32*) >>> b: 1048576 524288 swap # (Cyl. 32*- 97*) >>> c: 90060327 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 5605*) >>> d: 88487463 1572864 vinum # (Cyl. 97*- 5605*) >>> e: 524288 1573129 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 97*- 130*) >>> f: 8388608 2097417 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 130*- 652*) >>> g: 79574302 10486025 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 652*- 5605*) >> >> Partitions b, d and e look to me as if you have taken the 265 sectors >> off the beginning of partition e rather than the end of partition b. >> I suspect you just allocated 1048841 sectors to swap on the initial >> install, rather than the more logical 1048576. For other readers, >> it's very important that you don't move the start of any of the file >> system partitions. You can pretty much do what you want with swap. > > It looks okay to me--this is the label after adding the vinum partition. > Compared to the sysinstall label from the original post: > >>> 8 partitions: >>> # size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg] >>> a: 524288 0 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 0 - 32*) >>> b: 1048841 524288 swap # (Cyl. 32*- 97*) >>> c: 90060327 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 5605*) >>> e: 524288 1573129 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 97*- 130*) >>> f: 8388608 2097417 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 130*- 652*) >>> g: 79574302 10486025 4.2BSD 1024 8192 16 # (Cyl. 652*- 5605*) > > it looks to me like he reduced the size of 'b' by 265 sectors, and the > offsets of the following partitions haven't moved... Right, I was just observing because it would be easy for others to get the wrong impression. >> All correct, but I'd be inclined to specify it exactly. > > The only one I'd be inclined to specify exactly is the 265s for the > first volume, since that's a vinum "magic number". Well, that's one you don't really need to specify exactly, exactly for that reason. > My concern in specifying the following offsets is that I'm more likely > to make an arithmetic error (either due to stupidity, fatigue, or a typo) > with pretty ugly results than vinum is. It would almost be worthwhile writing a script to turn disklabel output into a Vinum config file. >>> "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0s1d count=265" >> >> Hmm, what have you seen here? About the only thing vinum objects to >> (not gets confused by) is if you try to change the name of the drive. >> This is a feature, not a bug, designed to stop you from accidentally >> creating a drive on the wrong spindle, and you can get round it with >> "create -f configfile". > > This is the stuff I was telling you about where I kept getting: > vinum -> create > 1: drive d1 device /dev/ad2s1d > ** 1: Invalid argument > > After playing with the BIOS settings a LOT to see if it was hardware > related, I found that once it started happening it didn't matter what > the BIOS said (for others--I've been having an interesting time getting > my two mirror disks in a HP Vectra VL400 both listed by FreeBSD 4.2 as > UDMA66). > > It's possible that somewhere along the line I'd "dd"ed the vinum data > from the first disk to the second (as part of trying to just initialise > the second from the first without having to go through several different > tools) or something. Anyway, I found that zeroing out the first 265 > sectors of the vinum partition fixed the problem. I didn't try "create -f". Hmm. Interesting. Again, the /var/log/messages and vinum_history contents might give a clue. > I'm not sure that I understand what "creating a drive on the wrong > spindle" means... Sorry, I meant partition, not spindle. A spindle is a physical disk drive: the term 'drive' can be used to mean either a spindle or a Vinum drive, so it's ambiguous. > I think it's having the plexes come up as "faulty" (rather than, > say, "stale" as the sub-disks do) that makes me jumpy. Yes, I suppose I should look at that one. > And the man page prints out as 25 pages, which is a lot to get through > and comprehend. Don't get me wrong--your documentation is some of the > best I've ever had to use (both this and "The Complete FreeBSD") and > covers in 25 pages what similar (commercial) offerings would require > volumes for. But there isn't a "quick start" that takes a first timer > through the steps, so I was just trying to give Randy a "heads up". I'm not complaining, quite the contrary. I was just pointing out a couple of potential gotchas. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010202125811.G82163>