Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 17:56:17 +0200 (EET) From: "Andrew V. Stesin" <stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua> To: gfoster@gfoster.com (Glen Foster) Cc: stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua, doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Frustrated....doc@freebsd.org Message-ID: <199601251556.RAA00921@office.elvisti.kiev.ua> In-Reply-To: <199601241317.IAA14143@nomad.osmre.gov> from "Glen Foster" at Jan 24, 96 08:17:15 am
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hello Glen and others, # ... 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. I'm now exploring a similar approach. After a recent Conner disk crash, I'm equipping a new box (to be an access server, with 10 modems). It's operation is critical. Pity, but the only HDDs we had available were 2 Conners. What I want to do, in order to get a fast fallback solution: sd0 and sd1 are identical, both have a root (sd[01]a) partition, a piece of swap, and several other FSes (/usr, whatever). During a normal operation, the box works with filesystems on sd0 only, but with swap on both disks; and the raw partitions are mirrored with dd (1) from cron with some different period (root and usr more rarely, user homespace and mail partitions -- more frequently, in the way like: rsd0a -> rsd1a, rsd0e -> rsd1e and so on). No mounted filesystems on sd1. In case one disk goes south, I simply remove it, leaving the other one as sd0, and reboot. I'm still Ok in 5 minutes, users will hardly notice the crash. (Yes, that's RAID for poor guys like me :) What's interesting: while sd1 was a fresh-formatted disk, dd worked Ok, I made an initial copy of rsd0c to rsd1c easily (fast!). But now I can't dd my rsd0a to rsd1a -- dd fails telling me that rsd1a is read-only file system. ??? rsd0e to rsd1e works fine! A day of beating and RTFMing with zero result. But this belongs to questions@freebsd.org, I'll ask there later... or learn how to "dump (1)", at last :) # 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. Do you mean "partitions" to be fdisk partitions (those called "slices"), or a BSD subpartitions with file systems? I recall that there _is_ a limit on BSD subpartitions quantity somewhere, though I'd never reached it :-) # 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. That's exactly what I told you -- I'd better use a more dumb tool, which wouldn't do even a single bit more than I told it myself. See my new signature below :-) # 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. Seconded completely. Jordan did a really good job. And yes, even complete newbies who saw nothing but dos in their life and with BAD knowlege of English, did that with minimal help. Truth. # Sheesh! I gotta knuckle down and buy an Intel box one of these days! Get a nice Pentium (with ASUS MB and Quantum disks on NCR SCSI bus). Not expensive, but very fast and stable. My friends in an Applied Mech Lab in Kiev Tech. Univercity got one, I gave them FreeBSD and helped with installation -- and they _are_ happy. They even got a Fortran compiler out of the box! :) It does some numbercrunching, and serves a small LAN, with virtually zero load average. Disks are doing 5Mb/sec through the filesystem. # # Glen Foster <gfoster@gfoster.com> # -- With best regards -- Andrew Stesin. +380 (44) 2760188 +380 (44) 2713457 +380 (44) 2713560 "You may delegate authority, but not responsibility." Frank's Management Rule #1.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199601251556.RAA00921>