On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 07:32:56AM -0500, Alex Adriaanse wrote: > This is a failover setup where all data is replicated to a backup > server that's located offsite. I'm not running the entire machine > from a DRBD disk because that means the root filesystem would have > to boot from the DRBD device. Thus, the initrd image would have to > configure the drbd device, and that's not supported on Debian AFAIK.
You can't run "an entire machine" off DRBD under any conditions, can you? Since a PC BIOS can't configure and start DRBD, the configuration and start has to be done by running a kernel loaded by the BIOS from a non-DRBD partition, which means something outside of DRBD has to boot up and then get DRBD started, at which point the machine can start using the DRBD stuff. Some little piece of the system has to remain outside of DRBD for the BIOS to boot and to get DRBD started, and that applies to any Linux distribution, not just Debian. If you want full back-up of your "entire machine", that part of the system that is outside DRBD (the part that actually boots the machine and starts DRBD) has to be copied to the backup machine by other means. You can try to make this kernel and its associated file system as small as possible, but you can't eliminate it. Am I right? -- | Ian! D. Allen - [email protected] - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Home Page: http://idallen.com/ Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/ | College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/ | Defend digital freedom: http://eff.org/ and have fun: http://fools.ca/ _______________________________________________ drbd-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linbit.com/mailman/listinfo/drbd-user
