Hi, I am new to RAIDframe on NetBSD (I usually use ZFS RAIDZx or hardware RAID if required). A machine turned up lately, previously running FreeBSD with hardware HPT1520-based mirror. As this didn't look supported by NetBSD (which was the original reason many years ago to provision FreeBSD on that box anyway), I decided to try RAIDframe, following Ch. 16 of the manual.
The guide states that after creating the fake mirror on the second disk, populating it with a copy of the system from the first one and writing the boot block, one should switch the boot from the second disk and then proceed with the further preparation of the first as a spare. This boot did not work for me under -current - I got a message from the bootloader that /boot cannot be found. However, when I booted again from the first disk, I found that my root was actually the desired single-disk RAID set - and not the primary NetBSD installation. During the first resilver, the system froze with a message about an interrupt from the HPT controller (this may be completely different matter, I suspect my P/S wasn't very well secured to the m/b, the box was unstable); I replaced the HPT controller with a Promise PDC20375 and reinstalled off USB installation disk the system on the first disk - I could not boot from either at this stage - in order to repeat the setup to create the RAID. I was surprised to find out that the second this still contained a previous copy of the system - even after a 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rwd5d bs=8k count=1' as per the manual - so I completed the process at this stage, did an fsck of /dev/rraid0a, rewrote the boot blocks etc. and tried to boot from that disk again. This did not work with the same reason - /boot cannot be opened. So I rebooted again from the first disk - only to find myself with root on /dev/raid0a using the original pax-ed contents of the first installation... I then proceeded to clean the first disk, adding it to the set as a spare and resilvering the set, which completed; I then rewrote the bootblocks following the manual. After that I was not able to boot from either of the disks with the same message - /boot not found, Error (2) - so I decided to do a clean install of everything, thinking that I've made some mistake. I was pretty surprized to faind again, that when I booted the installation image from the USB stick, I found myself on a perfect RAID1 mirrored disk... It seems to me that it doesn't matter where GENERIC comes from - when there is a RAID with Autoconfigure and Root set - it will switch the root to that. This is fine, but I can't figure out how to avoid using a USB stick to boot - where and how to install the bootblocks on the two RAID members - the manual says 'installboot ... /dev/rwd?a /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv2' - on condition that 'file -s /dev/rwd?a' finds FFS v2, or dumpfs -s /dev/rwd?a finds the same - in my case I get: uksup1# disklabel wd4 # /dev/rwd4d: type: ESDI disk: ST3120827AS label: fictitious flags: bytes/sector: 512 sectors/track: 63 tracks/cylinder: 16 sectors/cylinder: 1008 cylinders: 232581 total sectors: 234441648 rpm: 3600 interleave: 1 trackskew: 0 cylinderskew: 0 headswitch: 0 # microseconds track-to-track seek: 0 # microseconds drivedata: 0 5 partitions: # size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg/sgs] a: 234441585 63 RAID # (Cyl. 0*- 232580) c: 234441585 63 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0*- 232580) d: 234441648 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 232580) uksup1# file -s /dev/rwd4a /dev/rwd4a: x86 boot sector (dumpfs skips). On the raid disk I get: uksup1# disklabel raid0 # /dev/rraid0d: type: RAID disk: raid label: fictitious flags: bytes/sector: 512 sectors/track: 128 tracks/cylinder: 8 sectors/cylinder: 1024 cylinders: 228946 total sectors: 234441472 rpm: 3600 interleave: 1 trackskew: 0 cylinderskew: 0 headswitch: 0 # microseconds track-to-track seek: 0 # microseconds drivedata: 0 4 partitions: # size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg/sgs] a: 213961472 0 4.2BSD 0 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 208946*) b: 20480000 213961472 swap # (Cyl. 208946*- 228946*) d: 234441472 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 228946*) --- The question to -current users is - are there any recent changes in the RAIDframe and the system in general which lead to a different setup for a mirrored root? Or perhaps there is some other means of doing it altogether... Otherwise this query should have been directed at netbsd-users. Cheers, Chavdar Ivanov -- ----