Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 08:17:15 -0500 From: Glen Foster <gfoster@gfoster.com> To: stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua Cc: doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Frustrated....doc@freebsd.org Message-ID: <199601241317.IAA14143@nomad.osmre.gov> In-Reply-To: <199601232157.XAA06847@office.elvisti.kiev.ua> (stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua)
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I'd love to test it! Unfortunately I don't have a FreeBSD system to try it on that doesn't belong to a client :-(. In any case, by the sheerest coincidence, I had to talk one of my clients through R&R'ing a disk on one of his machines last night. The methodology was, install the new disk as sd1, dup the partition structure from sd0 -> sd1, edit the partition sizes slightly, newfs;dump|restore the file systems from sd0 to sd1, switch SCSI IDs, and reboot. We used your methodology for the fdisk and labeling part and it appeared to work well although the dump|restore to a 4GB disk takes some time and the machine hasn't been rebooted yet. It appears that sysinstall doesn't let you have more than a certain number of partitions working in the disklabeling activity (is it eight?) and so is unsuitable for this type of activity on slices/disks with more than a few partitions. It also wants to write /etc/fstab on exit which I would have preferred to leave alone (maybe not if you don't specify mounts but I was too chicken to try this without my hands on the keyboard). In any case, I would prefer that, if a "select disk" box was not checked in the fdisk section of sysinstall, its partitions would not appear in the disklabeling section. Just the usual problem with "user-friendly" software, you don't always know the consequences of your decisions. I am looking forward to Jordan's latest sysinstall creation, I am very impressed by what has been done to date even with the few glitches that have occurred from time-to-time. I have helped raw newbies through the sysinstall process and they have all been able to accomplish an install with a minimum of assistance, something I cannot say for any commercial Unix flavor with which I have been associated. Sheesh! I gotta knuckle down and buy an Intel box one of these days! I would be happy to document the process of replacing an existing disk (as opposed to adding a new disk) especially where it differs/extends the adding process if people feel there is a need for this. OTOH, if new tools for doing this are about to appear it may be dated as soon as it is authored. Glen Foster <gfoster@gfoster.com>
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