Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 20:34:05 -0800 From: Randi Harper <randi@freebsd.org> To: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> Cc: Maxim Khitrov <mkhitrov@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Peggy Wilkins <enlil65@gmail.com> Subject: Re: 8.0-RELEASE and "dangerously dedicated" disks Message-ID: <e277d6c80912012034u4ba1a6fdj97d72f4605bb3e0c@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20091201210321.GA39958@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> References: <1789c2360911280928t1e6e7b06p707abc1131f82bef@mail.gmail.com> <26ddd1750912010459weda306esbb81d7a2b7025b6e@mail.gmail.com> <20091201210321.GA39958@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
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I'm going to just reply to all of these at once. On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 07:59:42AM -0500, Maxim Khitrov wrote: > >> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Peggy Wilkins <enlil65@gmail.com> wrot= e: >> > Due to history I won't go into, all my production (currently >> > 7.2-RELEASE) systems are installed onto "dangerously dedicated" disks. >> > =A0What exactly do I need to do to upgrade them to 8.0? =A0(I'm not as= king >> > for an upgrade procedure, I'm familiar with that, but rather, how this >> > change impacts the upgrade.) =A0I think that the suggestion that the >> > disks need to be reformatted is extreme and I hope something less >> > extreme will suffice. Just to point out the obvious, you shouldn't use "dangerous" and "production" in the same sentence. :) >> > Also, just to be clear, does this statement refer to boot disks, data >> > disks, or both? >> > >> > It doesn't make sense to me that "dangerously dedicated" could have an >> > impact on UFS filesystems specifically. =A0A partition table is just a >> > partition table, regardless of what filesystems might be written on >> > disks, yes? =A0Am I misunderstanding something here? > > I don't know why it would have an affect, but they say it does. Did you see all the mailing list chatter about new installations failing due to sysinstall not being able to newfs device names that didn't exist? This is related. Also, a partition table isn't just a partition table. It's a little more complex than that. It has *nothing* to do with the filesystems inside. It has everything to do with the way that FreeBSD looks at the drive to figure out what's on it. See man pages for geom/gpart. There are others that have given a better explanation than I can provide (marcus, juli). Search the archives. Trust me, I didn't remove DD support from sysinstall just to make life more complicated for everyone. I did this because as it stands right now, it doesn't work. > I take this to mean that any disk that is created without slice > and partition within slice needs to be redone. =A0 =A0Probably it can all > be done in sysinstall, but you can do it with fdisk/bsdlabel/newfs. Or sade, although sade hasn't yet been updated to reflect the lack of DD support. Just don't use that option. > It does not matter if it is a boot disk or just a data disk. =A0It > is whether or not it has a (one or more, up to 4) slice defined > and within the slice[s] partitions defined which are turned in to > filesystems. =A0 You can tell by the dev names in /etc/fstab. > > If they have the full device name =A0/dev/da0s1a, ... da0s1h, they > are NOT dangerously dedicated and you should not have to worry. > > If the machine is dual booted with some MS thing as the other OS, then > it is very unlikely that they are dangerously dedicated. > > But, if they are like =A0/dev/da0 =A0or =A0/dev/da0s1 =A0(but with no 'a,= b..h') > then they are dangerously dedicated and you need to convert them. What? No. 's1' refers to slice 1 (or partition 1, as you're referring to it). bsdlabel is used inside this slice to create a partition for each mount point (a,b,c, etc). See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/formatting-media/x76.html. This documentation needs to be updated, but at least it'll give you a good explanation of how it used to work. With DD mode, you're creating a label against the drive itself, not a slice within. > First you would have to back up the contents of the disk, partition > by partition (mountable filesystem by mountable filesystem) however > you have it. =A0 Since it is 'dangerously dedicated' it is likely you > have a single filesystem per disk that needs backing up. > Check out that backup to make sure it is readable. =A0 There is no > going back. =A0 The backup can be done to tape or USB external disk > or network or any other media that will not be affected, has room > and can be written and read from the FreeBSD system. I think you're confusing running newfs against an unlabeled slice with DD mode. See above. DD mode means no slices, just a label for partitions. Not 'a single filesystem'. <Snipping how-to on setting up a drive as it's unnecessary. She asked for a less extreme measure. The poster clearly has some idea as to what is going on and probably doesn't need her hand held in setting up a new drive.> >> > >> > Thanks for helping to clear up my confusion... >> > >> > plw >> >> Peggy, >> >> Were you able to find an answer for this? I also have a number of >> servers and firewalls that use dangerously dedicated disks (boot and >> data). I don't see why UFS would care if it's mounted from ad1a vs. >> ad1s1a. It's not a filesystem thing. See above. -- randi
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