Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2014 21:27:45 -0500 From: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> To: precutcolours@mailcan.com, freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Install Tips for Newbie with FreeBSD 10 Message-ID: <52C771A1.9080207@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <1388799661.21741.66383497.2BE461E1@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1388713046.8058.65995889.43FA6F1D@webmail.messagingengine.com> <52C6288F.7050106@freebsd.org> <1388742923.13075.66094133.4ECA9B2B@webmail.messagingengine.com> <52C6C6A5.1020404@freebsd.org> <1388799661.21741.66383497.2BE461E1@webmail.messagingengine.com>
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On 01/03/14 20:41, precutcolours@mailcan.com wrote: > Nathan you are helpful, prompt, and appreciated. > > GPT allows the hard disk to boot other systems. They have their own > BIOS/firmware needs. Also, I've dealt with APM on *nix, and it's too > much pain and suffering. Never mind Windows or end users. Newer Macs use > GPT too. > > I suppose with $HOME and /tmp and caches in RAM, I could install BSD > wholesale to the 12 GB flash stick, though upgrades would be an all-day > chore given the awful writing speed and compilation. > > I had the impression ZFS support was more mature? It sounds like much in > BSD still doesn't quite work with ZFS, if the fs itself works fine. > Almost to a point of best avoided for exotic setups like mine on odd > CPUs like mine? > > Do you have tips for UFS on the flash stick? I know exactly what to do > using ext4 on Linux, but not really with UFS. Matter of fact, for ext4 I > do e.g. > > mkfs.ext4 -v -t ext4 -b 2048 -i 16384 -I 128 -m 1 -O ^has_journal -L > MyDiskName /dev/sdxN > > with /etc/mke2fs.conf > > features = extent,flex_bg,uninit_bg,dir_nlink,extra_isize > auto_64-bit_support = 1 > > Thanks > ZFS has some odd corners, especially in (relatively) exotic scenarios. That said, my work desktop is a G5 machine, which boots off a UFS / partition and then has a large fraction of the remaining data on ZFS (partially on APM, partially on GPT), so I can at least guarantee that works. If you are feeling adventurous, what I would suggest you do is the following. It's a little baroque, but I can promise you it works. Other people on the list could probably provide a pure-ZFS solution if you would prefer. 1) Install to the USB stick with the regular installer so that you have a bootable read-write system to play with. Just pressing enter repeatedly should do the right things. Then reboot from the stick. 2) Format the internal disk as you please. Typical setup to dedicate the whole disk to ZFS with a GPT partition map would be something like: gpart destroy -F ada0 (removes old formatting) gpart create -s gpt ada0 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs ada0 zpool create tank ada0 zfs create tank/usr zfs create tank/usr 3) Copy (cp -pRP) the contents of /usr to /tank/usr, and the same with /var. You could probably reextract the distfiles as well, but cp is easier. 4) change mountpoints on the ZFS file systems to be /usr, /var, /home, etc. for whichever bits you want. For example: zfs set -o mountpoint=/usr tank/usr 5) set zfs_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf Now you're all done. Of the system directories, I'd only put /usr and /var on ZFS. Moving, say, /bin, will make single-user-mode less friendly and cause weird and unpleasant things to happen. Please let us know if you run into trouble! -Nathan
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