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Date:      Wed, 3 Jul 2013 13:09:23 -0700
From:      Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org>
To:        Alexandr <shuriku@shurik.kiev.ua>
Cc:        "freebsd-fs@freebsd.org" <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Whole disk ZFS or -a4k partition
Message-ID:  <20130703200923.GA70533@icarus.home.lan>
In-Reply-To: <51D42416.8080604@shurik.kiev.ua>
References:  <51D3ED4F.5030102@shurik.kiev.ua> <8afaecbe0f764963b57fac7743f483bc@DBXPR07MB064.eurprd07.prod.outlook.com> <51D42416.8080604@shurik.kiev.ua>

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On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 04:16:06PM +0300, Alexandr wrote:
> 03.07.2013 14:56, Ivailo Tanusheff =D0=BF=D0=B8=D1=88=D0=B5=D1=82:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I can give you my point of view:
> >
> > Which zpool do you refer to? Still I would align both pools - on SSD =
because you will have a boot code anyway.=20
> > What I would do on SSD is to use:
> > gpart add -b 34 -s 94 -t freebsd-boot <ssd drive>
> >
> > The second thing I would get in mind Is the swap - I would not use a =
ZFS for that, had a lot of issues with similar setup and taking into acco=
unt that ZFS uses a lot of RAM you may become to situation when you want =
to swap data to use RAM for ZFS functionality, related to the swap volume=
 on the ZFS subsystem, which is a deadlock scenario.
> > So I would advise you to create swap partition on the SSD and use thi=
s partition in the system.
> > gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 4G  -l ssd-swap <ssd drive>
> > gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l ssd-zfs <ssd drive>
> >
> > This will solve you the alignment, swap issues and etc.
> >
> > About the second drive - there are two issues: may you need to replac=
e the disk and will you need additional swap in some case.
> > Just because future is unsure I would recommend to again use 4K align=
, to create a similar SWAP partition and DO NOT use it on the system and =
use gnop for the 4K sizing:
> > gnop create -S 4096 /dev/gpt/disk0
> > zpool create zroot /dev/gpt/disk0.nop
> > zpool export zroot
> > gnop destroy /dev/gpt/disk0.nop
> > zpool import zroot
> >
> > This way you will solve:
> > -  the 4K issues, if you have any;
> > - the replacement issues, if you get a disk with smaller sector count=
;
> > - in case you have some swap issues/needs, you will be able to issue =
swapon /dev/gpt/... and temporary increasethe swap, but not using this al=
l time you will not decrease performance of the system in normal days.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Ivailo Tanusheff
> >
> >
> Thank you for your explain. I'll try it soon and post my results. One
> thing - I can't use gpt-disks because off my laptop's bios (Lenovo
> Thinkpad E530) cannot boot it, only mbr-style.

You can use GPT with a BIOS that only supports MBR (in other words, you
do not need UEFI to boot from GPT).  FreeBSD's boot blocks are
intelligent in this regard.

I know because 1) I use this on my own systems that do not have UEFI, 2)
tons of other people here do as well, and 3) because even Wikipedia
states so.  :-)

--=20
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc@koitsu.org |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                http://jdc.koitsu.org/ |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.             PGP 4BD6C0CB |




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