Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:12:00 +0200 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> To: Daniel O'Connor <doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Cc: Dan Naumov <dan.naumov@gmail.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ZFS NAS configuration question Message-ID: <4A24FAF0.2020603@quip.cz> In-Reply-To: <200906021845.33739.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> References: <cf9b1ee00905301141t1945c053x43ce915b7085326e@mail.gmail.com> <20090602095228.8ff3654c.gerrit@pmp.uni-hannover.de> <cf9b1ee00906020146q149b5c8aq57759917784ff58@mail.gmail.com> <200906021845.33739.doconnor@gsoft.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On Tue, 2 Jun 2009, Dan Naumov wrote: > >>USB root partition for booting off UFS is something I have >>considered. I have looked around and it seems that all the "install >>FreeBSD onto USB stick" guides seem to involve a lot of manual work >>from a fixit environment, does sysinstall not recognise USB drives as >>a valid disk device to parition/label/install FreeBSD on? If I do go >>with an USB boot/root, what things I should absolutely keep on it and >>which are "safe" to move to a ZFS pool? The idea is that in case my >>ZFS configuration goes bonkers for some reason, I still have a fully >>workable singleuser configuration to boot from for recovery. > > > It should see them as SCSI disks, note that if you plug them in after > the installer boots you will need to go into Options and tell it to > rescan the devices. > > >>I haven't really used USB flash for many years, but I remember when >>they first started appearing on the shelves, they got well known for >>their horrible reliability (stick would die within a year of use, >>etc). Have they improved to the point of being good enough to host a >>root partition on, without having to setup some crazy GEOM mirror >>setup using 2 of them? > > > I would expect one to last a long time if you only use it for /boot and > use ZFS for the rest (or even just moving /var onto ZFS would save > heaps of writes). I am using this setup (booting from USB with UFS) in our backup storage server with FreeBSD 7.2 + ZFS. 2GB USB flash disk contains normal installation of the whole system, but is set to read only in fstab. ZFS is used for /tmp /var /usr/ports /usr/src /usr/obj and storage. root filesystem is remounted read write only for some configuration changes, then remounted back to read only. Miroslav Lachman # df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ufs/2gLive 1.6G 863M 642M 57% / devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev tank 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tank tank/system 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tank/system tank/system/usr 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tank/system/usr tank/system/tmp 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /tmp tank/system/usr/obj 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /usr/obj tank/system/usr/ports 1.1T 218M 1.1T 0% /usr/ports tank/system/usr/ports/distfiles 1.1T 108M 1.1T 0% /usr/ports/distfiles tank/system/usr/ports/packages 1.1T 125M 1.1T 0% /usr/ports/packages tank/system/usr/src 1.1T 171M 1.1T 0% /usr/src tank/system/var 1.1T 256K 1.1T 0% /var tank/system/var/db 1.1T 716M 1.1T 0% /var/db tank/system/var/db/pkg 1.1T 384K 1.1T 0% /var/db/pkg tank/system/var/log 1.1T 45M 1.1T 0% /var/log tank/system/var/run 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /var/run tank/vol0 2.6T 1.5T 1.1T 57% /vol0 tank/vol0/mon 1.1T 128K 1.1T 0% /vol0/mon (some filesystems are using compression, that's why ports and var are splitted in to more filesystems)
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4A24FAF0.2020603>