From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 2 09:15:41 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A8711065673 for ; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 09:15:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from cain.gsoft.com.au (cain.gsoft.com.au [203.31.81.10]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83A708FC12 for ; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 09:15:40 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from inchoate.gsoft.com.au (ppp121-45-217-173.lns11.adl2.internode.on.net [121.45.217.173]) (authenticated bits=0) by cain.gsoft.com.au (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n529FbwK056802 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 18:45:37 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) From: "Daniel O'Connor" To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 18:45:26 +0930 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 References: <20090602095228.8ff3654c.gerrit@pmp.uni-hannover.de> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart1260295.JiKEJ7TCrH"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200906021845.33739.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> X-Spam-Score: -1.395 () AWL,BAYES_00,RDNS_DYNAMIC X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.63 on 203.31.81.10 Cc: Gerrit =?utf-8?q?K=C3=BChn?= , Dan Naumov Subject: Re: ZFS NAS configuration question X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:15:41 -0000 --nextPart1260295.JiKEJ7TCrH Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline 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=20 the installer boots you will need to go into Options and tell it to=20 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=20 use ZFS for the rest (or even just moving /var onto ZFS would save=20 heaps of writes). Also, you could setup 2 USB sticks (install on one then dd onto the=20 other) so you have a cold spare. =2D-=20 Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C --nextPart1260295.JiKEJ7TCrH Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQBKJO215ZPcIHs/zowRAgg0AJ4uF3Dr6ChIaXBDFCuBka4vArOAZQCfRe4p iEHlF56WmqpaSqrd2i1IH3E= =is/n -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart1260295.JiKEJ7TCrH--