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Date:      Mon, 2 Oct 2000 23:13:27 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Christopher Rued <c.rued@xsb.com>
To:        xavian anderson macpherson <professional3d@home.com>
Cc:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: "Defining" vinum (was: APOLOGIES GIVEN TO ALL)
Message-ID:  <14809.20183.190794.578203@chris.xsb.com>
In-Reply-To: <39D948C3.44B4D479@home.com>
References:  <39D8FAA6.3C2CE669@home.com> <14809.216.377993.679478@chris.xsb.com> <39D90385.C9397AEA@home.com> <20001003113126.D759@wantadilla.lemis.com> <39D948C3.44B4D479@home.com>

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xavian anderson macpherson writes:
 > in bsd, it's;  [page 279 the complete freebsd]
 > # newfs -v /dev/vinum/concat
 > i geuss you would then mount a directory to that partition; that's how
 > it is done in linux.
 > in linux, my volumes were  /dev/ODIN/THOR01,2,3 etc.  [my kernel is
 > VALHALA  ;-) ]
 > the directories were then assigned to the volumes.
 > # mount  /dev/ODIN/THOR01  /usr
 > 
 > if i specify a logical volume (in linux) after i already have data on
 > the partition it is assigned to, it erases the data on that partition.
 > that's why with suse, it done in the beginning in the installation,
 > before anything else is done.
 > 
 > i have been told that i have to wait until after i have installed my
 > system, before i can define a vinum volume.
 > what do i have to do? install a small incomplete but running system,
 > only so that i can later specify the vinum volume on a separate
 > partition?
 > 
 > as i pointed out in suse-linux, the specification of logical volumes is
 > done in the initial installation process.  not later!  if i have to
 > first create a partial running system, on separate partition to create
 > my volumes, that means that i then have to go back and move (or erase)
 > the original partial system to make the partition it was on usable as a
 > vinum device.  is this clear enough?
 > 
 > if this is the process, it is redundant to say the least.

I do not think that you can boot from a vinum volume: 
      (from http://www.vinumvm.org/vinum/wishlist.html)

      It's currently not possible to mount the root file system on a
      Vinum volume. This is a chicken and egg problem: You can't start
      Vinum until the kernel is running, and the kernel needs to be
      mounted somewhere. There are at least four different possible
      ways to implement this: 

         1.Teach the bootstrap code about Vinum so that it could start
           Vinum and load directly from a Vinum volume. This is
           unlikely to be viable, since Vinum needs to know too much
           about the kernel environment. 

         2.Create a separate boot file system and put the kernel in
           there, then start Vinum and the root file system. This is
           the System V way, but I don't like it too much. 

         3.Create an MFS root file system. This effectively lives in
           swap, but there's no problem there. We'd need an easier way
           to build MFS kernels. 

         4.Boot normally, start Vinum and then mount the root file
           system on top of the old root file system. This might work,
           up to a point: you can mount a file system on any mount
           point, even if files are open in the hierarchy below the
           mount point. Unfortunately, there are a number of problems
           with this approach. In particular, you can't close all
           files on the old root partition, which means that you're
           not completely resilient. In addition, if you boot from the
           Vinum partition as a normal disk partition (which is
           possible and seems to make sense), you'll have consistency
           problems if you change a file on one partition and not the
           other, since the system sees the two partitions as separate. 

           One possibility here would be for the mount operation to go
           through the vnodes for each open file and change them to
           point to the Vinum volume. It's likely that this will be a
           difficult operation to perform. 

      Status: I'm still thinking about this one. It's the single most
      asked-for feature, and I'm very open to suggestions about how to
      implement it. 

So, it seems that you wont have a partial install, and then a move.
You'll have a full install, and a post-install configuration of vinum
for all remaining slices.

As I mentioned, I have not used vinum (although I am now very
interested in it), so I cannot tell you exactly how to set it up.
From what I gather, what your question boils down to is:

  "I want to install FreeBSD, and I want to set up my filesystem using
   vinum.  How do I do this?"

Perhaps it is best to allow someone more qualified (Greg :)) to answer
this question for you, as I have no working knowledge of vinum.

				    -Chris


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