Re: Fresh install on gmirror'ed disks?

On Tue, March 7, 2006 4:39 am, JoaoBR wrote:
On Tuesday 07 March 2006 08:55, Volker wrote:
I do agree that gmirror is not that bad and not that difficult. But
take a look at how to setup a fresh system using gmirror (slice by
slice mirroring):

- install a complete system to a fresh disc
- create the (well sized) slices on a 2nd disc (not that easy)
- create the gmirror set on disc 2
- bring gmirror up
- copy all filesystems over to the gmirror set
- reboot
- create exactly sized slices on disc 1
- insert everything into the gmirror set

Using that procedure you're going to copy each installed file three
times (install, copy to mirror, sync mirror). That's a waste of
time compared to a solution where the installer would be able to
install directly into a mirror.

There's no need to copy files around. gmirror handles it all for you
behind the scenes. Just create the gmirror labels using the existing
disks/slices/partitions, then insert the second set of
disks/slices/parittions. gmirror will handle synchonising the data
across the mirror.

When using disc based gmirror (instead of per slice gmirror) the
procedure is a bit easier, but similar.

there is no need to copy anything around ...
- you do install the system as usual
- before rebooting you create the to be mirrored disk with the gmirror
label command (you do not loose data here)
- then you change your fstab acordingly
- you reboot
- you insert the mirror disk(s)
- gmirror should start syncing automatically if you did everything
right

realy, this is a 3 minute thing

This is the process I just went through. It would be nice if there
was a post-install step that did this automatically, but it wasn't all
that hard to do manually. Just CTRL+F4 to open the terminal, run a
few commands to create the mirror, edit /etc/fstab, and exit the
installer.

Dru Lavigne's OnLamp article about this makes it almost trivial to do.

----
Freddie Cash
fcash@xxxxxxxx

_______________________________________________
freebsd-stable@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

Relevant Pages

  • Re: gmirror problem on 5.3-R i386
    ... > I'm having a problem with gmirror. ... > first disk to the mirror after booting off the second drive. ... You probably destroyed your slice table here. ...
    (freebsd-questions)
  • Re: Fresh install on gmirrored disks?
    ... From what I've seen on the net, to install and boot off RAIDed system ... using gmirror or gstripe commands ... copy all filesystems over to the gmirror set ... times (install, copy to mirror, sync mirror). ...
    (freebsd-stable)
  • Re: gmirror + gjournal setup question
    ... I would like to know what is the best way to setup gmirror + gjournal, ... on a slice level on two hard drives. ... journalized slice on both hard drive and then I mirror /dev/ad0s1.journal ...
    (freebsd-questions)
  • Re: Samba and RAID 1 using gmirror on 2 new disks
    ... > Both assume you only have 2 drives and want to mirror the drive containing FreeBSD. ... I only want to mirror the data drive da1, and would appreciate a concise set of steps for doing this right the first time. ... The name of the new slice will probably be "da1s1". ... Check your mirror with "gmirror list" and "gmirror status", and see if your filesystems are mounted with "df". ...
    (freebsd-questions)
  • gmirror + glabel + gjournal and 7.0 installation
    ... I'd like to mirror these with gmirror and I think also I want to ... use glabel to make things easier if one of the disks fails ... I'm proposing to gmirror a slice and put the ...
    (freebsd-questions)