Vinum on Root

[Richard Johannesson]

I went back to the original root install method as per the book, and I got
vinum working.

Now, needed to change the size of the var volume, since during install I
followed the book example and had var take up the rest of the disk, in my
case all 187Gigs of it :). Was under the impression that it would be easy to
resize or at least remove and create a new smaller var once the base is
working.

So, backed up the /var directory. Started the vinum prompt and used rm to
remove the var subdisk, then remove the var plex and finally was able to
remove the var volume. Now ran create vinum_var.conf - in this case the file
was simply:
   volume var
     plex org concat
       sd len 1g drive rootdev
So, did not use the offset, since vinum is now working and should know where
the next 1g should come from. Is this a bad assumption?

Well, the vinum create worked fine. Then copied the backed up /var contents
to the new vinum volume. Did a reboot, and reboot failed. System requesting
to run fsck. So, in single user mode did this and got the following error:
"** /dev/vinum/var (NO WRITE)

CANNOT READ BLK: 381244736
CONTINUE? Yes

THE FOLLOWING DISK SECTORS COULD NOT BE READ: 381244736, 381244737,
381244738, 381244739,
/dev/vinum/var: CANNOT FIGURE OUT FILE SYSTEM PARTITION

So, what should I have done and is there a way to back out of this?

By the way, it a great book, I'm just a little thick when it comes to vinum
& new unix. So, know I'm trying to do a lot right out of the gate - so
really appreciate all the help I've been getting from everybody!


Thanks again,
Richard


> >>> 	I. 1. setup unix partitions for swap, /, /usr, and /var
> >>> 	   2. install FreeBSD5.1
> >>> 	   3. go through the bsdlabel -e
> >>> 	   3.1 modify the swap with the 281 offset
> >>> 	   3.2 add vinum partition h: with the same size as c:, but with 
> >>>              a 16 offset
> >>> 	   4. create a vinum config file
> >>> -->	   4.1 map each sub-disk to the exact size and offset as the
> >>>              unix partitions
> >>> 	II.1. setup unix partitions for swap and /
> >>> 	   2. install FreeBSD5.1
> >>> 	   3. go through the bsdlabel -e
> >>> 	   3.1 modify the swap with the 281 offset
> >>> 	   3.2 add vinum partition h: with the same size as c:, but with >
>>>              a 16 offset
> >>> 	   4. create a vinum config file
> >>> -->	   4.1 create sub-disks using simply the size you want with
no
> >>>              offset
> > So, if I use Method I, as you specified in the book, can I then move
> those
> > particular partitions (/, /usr, /var) around without worrying about the
> > original unix partition layout (offsets etc)? So, the original /, /usr,
> /var
> > sizes and offsets won't limit the location of the /dev/vinum/root,
> > /dev/vinum/usr, /dev/vinum/var?
> 
> They will for root, because you boot from the partition, not the
> volume.  Also, you should understand that moving partitions means
> moving data.
> 
> > For the mirroring case, should the swap partitions be mirrored too?
> 
> That depends on whether you want to still have a swap partition if a
> drive fails :-)
> 
> Greg
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