gvinum and RAID

[John Nielsen]

On Thursday 24 May 2007 02:08:41 pm tradigan at newrevolutions.net wrote:
> > On Thursday 24 May 2007 12:43:36 pm tradigan at newrevolutions.net wrote:
> >> Is it possible to use gvinum to create a striped array that contains the
> >> root partition?  I want to be able to combine all 4 of the hard disks
> >> into
> >> one logical striped array and install the boot partition on it.  I have
> >> found documentation on how to mirror the root drive, but none on using a
> >> striped array for the root drive.
> >>
> >> Is this possible?
> >
> > Not without hardware support, no.
> >
> > I would create a small (1-2 GB) root partition one two or more of the
> > drives
> > and mirror it with gmirror (or not.. you must not care about fault
> > tolerance
> > if you're setting up a giant stripe). You could maybe use the same 1-2GB
> > on
> > the other drives for swap or tmp space (optionally mirrored as well).
> > Then use the rest of the space on all the drives for your stripe array.
> > I'd recommend gstripe over gvinum for ease-of-use, but it's up to you.
> >
> Is it possible to use gmirror for a small partition on two disks and then
> use gstripe on the remaining disk space of those drives to create a larger
> stripe?
>
> I didn't think that was possible.  I could be wrong however :).
>
> If that will work, that would be my best option right there.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm recommending.

On each drive:
	fdisk -BI
	bsdlabel -wB
	bsdlabel -e
	  (set up partitions here, use a for root and d for stripe)
Then:
	gmirror label somename firstdisks1a seconddisks1a ...
	gstripe lable someothername firstdisks1d seconddisks1d ...

etc. There are obviously a few blanks in the above but the manpages for each 
command and online documentation will help you fill them in.

JN