[Vinum-devel] loader.conf variables for vinum

[Joerg Wunsch]

[root at vinum with FreeBSD 4.x]

As Bob Van Valzazh wrote:

> Short answer: don't set vinum.autostart

> Long answers: 5.x contains code to discover all attached disk drives
> whereas 4.x does not.  Hence 4.x needs to be told were to look for
> disks (that's the vinum.drives setting).  Vinum.autostart just tells
> 5.x to run the discovery code.

Addition: the code to parse the name of the root device in 4.x is too
narrow-minded to parse a string like /dev/vinum/root, it can only
parse [/dev/]DDU[sS]P-style root device names (DD - driver name, U -
unit number, sS - slice number, P - partition letter).  Thus you need
to set the vinum.root variable so the vinum subsystem pre-determines
the name of the root device, and the parser for the root device name
will be bypassed.  FreeBSD 5.x contains a much more flexible parser
for the root device name, which allows each subsystem to place hooks
into it, and try translating a name like /dev/vinum/root into the
respective major/minor device number.  That's why vinum.root is no
longer needed under 5.x either.

-- 
cheers, J"org               .-.-.   --... ...--   -.. .  DL8DTL

http://www.sax.de/~joerg/                        NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)