When I clone a system, I DDR copy the base mdisks but not the multiple
3390-m9s that will be the Oracle database LVM volume. When I install
(rarely), I start with empty mdisks. It is prepping those multiple
volumes for the LVM that I really wanted to have have an easier
initialization process. I am not enough of a linux admin yet to play
with multiple partitions on the same volume or remember to & to
background individual commands. I am still in the old mindset of
initializing volumes before giving them to a guest (always with CMS
servers except for SFS and I don't use those much, and always with MVS
servers since ICKDSF arrived).
/Tom Kern
Mark Post wrote:
On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 3:12 PM, in message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Thomas Kern
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If such a tool can be made, why not go just a bit further and mimic what
would have been done by dasdfmt and fdisk (1 partion on the whole mdisk)?=
If you're cloning guests, this is a waste of time and machine resources. If
you're doing installs, it might be worthwhile, if you know 100% of the time
that every minidisk allocated to every guest will only ever have 1 partition
put on it, and won't be part of an LVM volume group. If you can't say that,
then again this is a waste of time and resources. Let the installation
automation do what it is supposed to do, and the machine resources used get
charged to the proper account.
And optionally, why not put in the correct blocks that mimic an mkfs?
This is really not a good idea. For repeatability purposes, you always want to
do a mkfs on all file systems during a fresh install. If you're going to be
using LVM, you also want to do a dasdfmt during the install process, to get rid
of the LVM metadata left over from the previous attempt. Plus, I would be
very, very skeptical that an EXT3 journal would be created correctly. Mark
Wheeler's methodology avoids having to worry about that.
Then I could run several initializations on preallocated volumes while I =
am still generating the target directory entry, granting vsw access, etc.
Personally, I think you're trying to use the wrong tool (CMS) to get around
this problem, when it's not really necessary. Let the Linux system format its
own disks and file systems, and do them in parallel.
Mark Post
