Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 5 Oct 2002 09:54:41 +0930
From:      Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Emiel Kollof <coolvibe@hackerheaven.org>, Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, n0go013 <ttz@blahdeblah.demon.co.uk>, current <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: [ GEOM tests ] disklabel warnings and vinum drives lost
Message-ID:  <20021005002441.GS72541@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1021004201933.64999K-100000@fledge.watson.org>
References:  <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1021004200338.70577U-100000@fledge.watson.org> <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1021004201933.64999K-100000@fledge.watson.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Friday,  4 October 2002 at 20:21:29 -0400, Robert Watson wrote:
>
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Robert Watson wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Terry Lambert wrote:
>>
>>> The assumption here is that the devfs will be available to the system
>>> before the root is mounted transparently over it.  This is also doable
>>> with an unmounted instance of the backing devfs, not yet mounted on
>>> /dev, if a transparent mount of / over top of a preexiting / -> /dev is
>>> not supported (i.e. devfs is mounted on /dev on the root FS, rather than
>>> the root FS being mounted on a backing node on which defvfs is already
>>> mounted on /, and the devices showing through as if they were on /).
>>
>> Actually, no -- Vinum doesn't know how to do that--the device name used
>> in this code originates in a userland ioctl() configuration call for
>> Vinum. However, here's a patch that makes Vinum use namei() to rely on
>> devfs to locate requested devices instead of parsing the device name and
>> guessing the device number (incorrectly with GEOM).  Unfortunately, I
>> almost immediately run into a divide by zero due to a zero sector size.
>> Jeff Roberson mentioned to me he had a fix for this bug that he sent to
>> Greg, but that was never committed.
>
> On the general topic of access to devices before a root has been found,
> Maxime Henrion <mux@FreeBSD.org> has done some interesting work on
> 'rootfs', a pseudofs used to bootstrap support for devfs, etc.  In such an
> environment, Vinum and other consumers of devices would be able to rely on
> devfs access prior to the "real root" mount process.  I'm not sure which
> pivotroot-like trick he's using, or whether he's doing the union thing to
> do the root re-mount.  Presumably he has to be careful not to deadfs the
> devfs nodes in place before the real root turns up, etc.

As I say, it was working in early 2000.  Some details needed changing,
and the work never got finished, but it wasn't very much work.

Greg
--
See complete headers for address and phone numbers

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20021005002441.GS72541>