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Date:      Thu, 22 Nov 2012 22:56:50 -0700 (MST)
From:      Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To:        Shane Ambler <FreeBSD@shaneware.biz>
Cc:        freebsd questions list <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD on SSD on ASUS P5KPL-C
Message-ID:  <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211222232330.20251@wonkity.com>
In-Reply-To: <50AEDD3E.8030007@ShaneWare.Biz>
References:  <CAAHVa8thx4_fjQrTUwwGxERtCvTX9NnR59JxH7gQ38tq7irCZw@mail.gmail.com> <CAHHBGkph5j86wDpobasdtM%2BJZMQKt2eqcn8LKd4V0NzyDxR3Tw@mail.gmail.com> <CAAHVa8vm6vFa8ajiOJT3VWnvcZasdQM%2BnaJdjG9eLx%2Bj5F80CA@mail.gmail.com> <50A83993.50401@ShaneWare.Biz> <CAAHVa8uf65aaEWcKehojc0M67Psrn8Mpfj9GT=XR4GK47c%2BBWA@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211191235400.28618@wonkity.com> <CAAHVa8tZBPGPyuuU0bSwyPdN5ZtW_d4t9cJN7CcxEEaUXO7OGw@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211191801060.31205@wonkity.com> <CAAHVa8vsXUPn%2BndPsbR3GCdneu5iQSfVt0v--GgDvRvZL8bSCA@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211212020420.10378@wonkity.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211212118100.10378@wonkity.com> <50AEDD3E.8030007@ShaneWare.Biz>

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On Fri, 23 Nov 2012, Shane Ambler wrote:

> On 22/11/2012 14:49, Warren Block wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Nov 2012, Warren Block wrote:
>> 
>>> Got a chance to set up a scratch drive and check this.  Turns out
>>> I left out the step of creating a "slice" (MBR partition) to hold
>>> the FreeBSD partitions.  Also, GPT labels cannot be used in an
>>> MBR. Fixed below.  I will probably add this to my disk setup
>>> article because it has come up more than once.
>> 
>> The fdisk/bsdlabel section of my disk setup article has been
>> rewritten to use gpart.  Feedback welcome.
>> 
>> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
>
> Something I meant to ask before - is there any benefit to following the
> steps described in
> http://www.aisecure.net/2012/01/16/rootzfs/

My guide is based on using UFS.  ZFS or other filesystems will also 
benefit from block alignment, but the methods to get there can be 
different.

> The step of using gnop is meant to trick zfs into believing the disk has
> 4K sector size to improve performance, which I would think zfs would be
> able to figure out by talking to the disk.

Unless ZFS is put on a bare, unpartitioned disk, configuration for 
performance is better left to the user.  It's a pain to correct 
automatic configs when they guess wrong.

> Does partitioning hide the sector size or would the step of aligning
> the partition start to a 4k sector unhide the 4k size?
> Or are these steps just a waste of time?

It's not about hiding the device's native block size, it's about getting 
the filesystem to do aligned I/O so the device can just read or write 
a single 4K block instead of part of one and part of another.



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