Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Kirk Strauser]

At 2003-07-26T00:27:20Z, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> OK, missed that.  The whole intention of the exercise I describe in the
> book is to have a mirrored root file system.  This has been consistently
> the most demanded new feature in Vinum.

Understood.  I had no desire to do that on my systems, but I can see why
some people would want to.

> A much better approach, which I'll describe in the next edition of the
> book, is to maintain all config files under RCS.  This gives you more than
> one backup.

I look forward to reading about it.  I've considered importing /etc into my
main CVS repository, but I hadn't really given it a whole lot of thought
yet.
-- 
Kirk Strauser


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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Wednesday, 23 July 2003 at 14:11:31 -0500, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> At 2003-07-23T18:21:42Z, Eivind Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> Are you able to have a mirrored root-device (/) with this approach? Or
>> will you end up with having a single copy of / on one drive?
>
> I end up with a single copy of '/'. 

OK, missed that.  The whole intention of the exercise I describe in
the book is to have a mirrored root file system.  This has been
consistently the most demanded new feature in Vinum.

> The reasons I do this are that:
>
> 1) Any old FreeBSD boot floppy/CD can read the "mirrors" of '/' in the event
>that the root drive dies, regardless of the state of vinum.  Makes
>disaster recovery that much easier.

The way I describe works as well in this situation.

> 2) You get a little bit of versioning for free.  Accidentally overwrite
>/etc/master.passwd with mergemaster?  Just grab the copy from
>/rootbackup.

A much better approach, which I'll describe in the next edition of the
book, is to maintain all config files under RCS.  This gives you more
than one backup.

Greg
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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Wednesday, 23 July 2003 at  9:19:16 -0500, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> At 2003-07-23T13:51:28Z, Eivind Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> There's no data on the disks that I want/have to keep. Is it at all
>> possible to configure Vinum and then install FreeBSD or will I have to
>> install FreeBSD first and then "convert" to Vinum-volumes by manually
>> editing the disklabel (with bsdlabel), calculating offsets etc.?
>
> I've had great success with configuring an initial tiny partition as '/' and
> doing a minimal installation (and I mean *minimal*, as in, there's nothing
> else you can remove and still have it boot).  The first step after booting
> the new system is then configuring vinum, adding volumes for /usr, /var, and
> so on, and moving the (small!) amount of data from the "physical" filesystem
> to their vinum counterparts.  Once that's up, I do a more complete install
> with /stand/sysinstall.

And how do you reuse the space taken up by your initial tiny
partition, in the order of 150 MB?

Greg
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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Wednesday, 23 July 2003 at 14:11:31 -0500, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> At 2003-07-23T18:21:42Z, Eivind Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>> Out of curiosity, what offsets have you had to calculate?
>
>> I've read a bit of a chapter from the 4th edition of The Complete FreeBSD:
>>  (or, as text
>> ).  It suggests to install the
>> swap-partition first on the drive, setup a slice for vinum to cover the
>> entire drive and then run bsdlabel and change the offset and size for the
>> swap and vinum partitions.
>
> Weird.  I've never bothered with any of that.  I always just call "create"
> with:
>
>   sd length 0 drive myDrive1
>
> and let vinum calculate the correct sizes.

Then you're missing the point.  "length 0" just gives you the rest of
the volume.  Here you need to find the data which is already on disk.

There was an error in the first cut of this document.  Under some
circumstances it could lead to overwriting the bootstrap, thus making
the disk unbootable.  For further reference: the space required at the
beginning of the disk is 281 sectors, not 265 as originally
documented.  See the document for more details.

Greg
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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[oremanj]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:51:28PM +0200 or thereabouts, Eivind Olsen wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I'm about to install a new machine which will have 2 IDE-disks. I'd like to 
> mirror some volumes between those disks while other volumes should be 
> striped.
> I'd like to do this with FreeBSD 5.1.
> 
> There's no data on the disks that I want/have to keep. Is it at all 
> possible to configure Vinum and then install FreeBSD or will I have to 
> install FreeBSD first and then "convert" to Vinum-volumes by manually 
> editing the disklabel (with bsdlabel), calculating offsets etc.?
> 
> In other words, is there an easy way to do this? :)

Maybe. Either you get to do it the hard way, or you get to use beta
software for it :-)

> 
> (I already tried installing FreeBSD and then "converting" to Vinum but 
> failed miserably and am now looking for an easy way out.)

I think Mondo  might do the job
here. Yeah, I'm biased (I ported the thing to BSD :-), but it
seriously might work.  Note that the FreeBSD port is beta, and the
links on the downloads page for it are BROKEN. [*don't use them --
use CVS*]

Install system to one HD. Make sure you have the ports collection,
CVS, and the devtools. Install these ports:
+ devel/gmake
+ devel/newt
+ lang/perl
+ shells/bash
+ sysutils/afio
+ sysutils/cdrtools

$ export CVSROOT=:pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/mondorescue
$ cvs login
Password: 
$ cvs checkout mindi-fbsd
[snip]
$ cvs checkout mondo-devel
[snip]
$ unset CVSROOT

$ su
Password:
# cd mindi-fbsd && bash install.sh && cd ..
# cd mondo-fbsd && ./configure && make && make install && cd ..
# mondoarchive && : follow prompts && reboot && : insert CD && : interactive mode
[yes, you CAN type that command :-]

If it asks you whether to backup the MBR raw, say yes.

Make sure you set up some Vinum partitions in the mountlist
editor. Add some partitions type + mountpoint "raid", put in
/dev/vinum/something as the device (replace "something" with the
volume name you want, of course), press OK, edit that entry, select
mountpoint, press RAID.., follow prompts. Delete all non-RAID
partitions, except maybe a /boot partition or /.

Note that the RAID editor is a bit suboptimal (only uses one subdisk
per partition). Still, it works. 

Do you want to partition your disks? Yes.
Do you want to format your disks? Yes.
Do you want to restore everything? Yes.

If it doesn't work, and you feel like it, email me the problem, along
with /var/log/mondo-archive.log.

HTH,
-- Josh

> 
> -- 
> Eivind Olsen
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Kirk Strauser]

At 2003-07-23T18:21:42Z, Eivind Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Are you able to have a mirrored root-device (/) with this approach? Or
> will you end up with having a single copy of / on one drive?

I end up with a single copy of '/'.  However, I partition (both,all) drives
identically, so that each has a 200MB-or-so slice at the beginning.  I use
rsync from a cron job to make backups of '/' to the starting slice of each
drive.

The reasons I do this are that:

1) Any old FreeBSD boot floppy/CD can read the "mirrors" of '/' in the event
   that the root drive dies, regardless of the state of vinum.  Makes
   disaster recovery that much easier.

2) You get a little bit of versioning for free.  Accidentally overwrite
   /etc/master.passwd with mergemaster?  Just grab the copy from
   /rootbackup.

>> Out of curiosity, what offsets have you had to calculate?

> I've read a bit of a chapter from the 4th edition of The Complete FreeBSD:
>  (or, as text
> ).  It suggests to install the
> swap-partition first on the drive, setup a slice for vinum to cover the
> entire drive and then run bsdlabel and change the offset and size for the
> swap and vinum partitions.

Weird.  I've never bothered with any of that.  I always just call "create"
with:

  sd length 0 drive myDrive1

and let vinum calculate the correct sizes.
-- 
Kirk Strauser


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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Eivind Olsen]

--On 23. juli 2003 09:19 -0500 Kirk Strauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I've had great success with configuring an initial tiny partition as '/'
and doing a minimal installation (and I mean *minimal*, as in, there's
nothing else you can remove and still have it boot).  The first step
after booting the new system is then configuring vinum, adding volumes
for /usr, /var, and so on, and moving the (small!) amount of data from
the "physical" filesystem to their vinum counterparts.  Once that's up, I
do a more complete install with /stand/sysinstall.
Are you able to have a mirrored root-device (/) with this approach? Or will 
you end up with having a single copy of / on one drive?

Out of curiosity, what offsets have you had to calculate?
I've read a bit of a chapter from the 4th edition of The Complete FreeBSD: 
 (or, as text 
).
It suggests to install the swap-partition first on the drive, setup a slice 
for vinum to cover the entire drive and then run bsdlabel and change the 
offset and size for the swap and vinum partitions.

--
Regards / Hilsen
Eivind Olsen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Re: Installing FreeBSD onto Vinum-volumes?

[Kirk Strauser]

At 2003-07-23T13:51:28Z, Eivind Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> There's no data on the disks that I want/have to keep. Is it at all
> possible to configure Vinum and then install FreeBSD or will I have to
> install FreeBSD first and then "convert" to Vinum-volumes by manually
> editing the disklabel (with bsdlabel), calculating offsets etc.?

I've had great success with configuring an initial tiny partition as '/' and
doing a minimal installation (and I mean *minimal*, as in, there's nothing
else you can remove and still have it boot).  The first step after booting
the new system is then configuring vinum, adding volumes for /usr, /var, and
so on, and moving the (small!) amount of data from the "physical" filesystem
to their vinum counterparts.  Once that's up, I do a more complete install
with /stand/sysinstall.

Out of curiosity, what offsets have you had to calculate?
-- 
Kirk Strauser


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