Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 1 Aug 2013 00:22:38 -0400
From:      J David <j.david.lists@gmail.com>
To:        Shane Ambler <FreeBSD@shaneware.biz>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Problem with zfsloader on 9.2-BETA2
Message-ID:  <CABXB=RTt5t9EAbw0Vi-H9_kYnzkcry1wqwv6TtW6Ntmz5UqCBA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <51F9D7C3.7020806@ShaneWare.Biz>
References:  <CABXB=RRhVDdKCidwnrji1qR41Rx7uvs2Lx1ZPF1FREOHcnm5bg@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1307311107240.1327@mail.fig.ol.no> <CABXB=RR7E2s5GU29ZgU1hBk4MqkvrO95-RBg4TE6ahozP6KmCg@mail.gmail.com> <51F9D7C3.7020806@ShaneWare.Biz>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 11:36 PM, Shane Ambler <FreeBSD@shaneware.biz> wrote:
> I think that 8M partition looks weird. It looks like a leftover from a
> previous config?

We leave some space at the end of drives in case we need to change
drive vendors.  Sometimes vendor A's drives are a few sectors smaller
than vendor B's for the same advertised capacity.

Accordingly, 6a945a3b-1dd2-11b2-99a6-080020736631 is a "reserved" GPT
partition type GUID.  It is a GPT way of saying, "This space
intentionally left blank."

It also hypothetically leaves some space at the end of the disk for
GEOM functionality not foreseen at setup time, though in practice with
ZFS that doesn't come up.

> Two things I would think to consider - the odd alignment of the
> partition. Most recent drives benefit from 4K alignment.

These disks are not 4k disks.  Even if they were, or if we swap out to
4k drives in the future, the ZFS data partitions absolutely are 4K
aligned; they start at sector 256, which is 128k (32 4k sectors) into
the disk.

But even if they weren't that wouldn't prevent the system from
booting.  Nor would empty space at the end of the drive.  Or at least
shouldn't.  And in fact didn't, until the upgrade from 8.4 to 9.2.
Which is the issue at hand.

Thanks!



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?CABXB=RTt5t9EAbw0Vi-H9_kYnzkcry1wqwv6TtW6Ntmz5UqCBA>