Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 09:24:51 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Second Drive Bootable. Message-ID: <20030205092451.GA38913@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <004701c2ccae$f8a628d0$6a01a8c0@grant> References: <004701c2ccae$f8a628d0$6a01a8c0@grant>
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On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 07:38:55PM -0500, Grant Peel wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a frsh install of freebsd 4.7.
>
> I have a second drive exactly the same geometry as the first.
>
> I have dumped and restored all the filesystems from the first to the second.
>
> Is there a way, short of rebooting, that I can check and see if the second
> drive is bootable?
>
> (I am looking to use the second as a 'mirror' drive).
The second drive won't provide you with a fully functional replacement
system as-is. You'll need to decide how you want to use it:
i) As an exact copy of the primary drive. That means that in the
event of the primary drive failing, you've got to open up your
machine and swap your backup drive in in-place of the original
primary.
ii) As an alternate disk you can boot from at will. In this case,
you'll need to make some modifications to at least /etc/fstab in
order to mount partitions from backup disk.
If you want option (ii) you will also need to set up the boot blocks
on both disks using boot0cfg(8). It's exactly like the dual boot
system Giorgos describes in
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=976599+0+current/freebsd-questions
In short, you'll need to do:
# boot0cfg -v -B /dev/ad0
# boot0cfg -v -B /dev/ad1
This will give you the ability to switch easily to booting from the
other disk. Unfortunately, no one can guarrantee that it's going to
work until you test it. Also I don't think it is possible to
configure the system to automatically reboot from the other disk,
should the first disk fail, without having someone present to
reconfigure the system BIOS and hit the buttons in response to the
boot loader prompt.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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