Re: FreeBSD boot menu is missing

"Peter Steele" <psteele@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@xxxxxx> writes:
Mirroring the entire slice is far simpler. If you mirror individual
partitions, you have to label them *before* you newfs them.
What we're really trying to accomplish is an automated install via a
PXE boot server. Unfortunately gmirror isn't available in mfsroot at
the point the file systems need to be set up. So what we've ended up
doing is doing is what amounts to a bootstrap install on the first
disk, and then after the installCommit is done, gmirror is available
and we have a post install script that runs gmirror on the other
drives. Then the script copies the OS slice over to the gmirrored fs,
reboots to this mirrored system, and finally adds the original disk to
the mirror. It's fully automated and gives us a mirrored OS slice
across four drives, and we even handle drives of different sizes.

Exactly.

So what you do, instead, is make sure there is a little space left over
at the end of the slice that you create in the first step. Then, once
gmirror is available, you gmirror label the slice, then gmirror insert
the corresponding slice on the other disk(s), and gmirror rebuild. No
copying involved; gmirror takes care of it all.

The key here is that 'gmirror label' is non-destructive as long as the
last sector on the provider is unused.

FreeBSD doesn't handle hot swap very well we've discovered, not unless
you are using a RAID based backplane and drives.

It does, AFAIK, even on SATA, provided the controller supports it and is
configured correctly.

DES
--
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des@xxxxxx
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