sysinstall vs gmirror

[Brandon Gooch]

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 1:20 AM,  <perryh at pluto.rain.com> wrote:
> Adam Vande More <amvandemore at gmail.com> wrote:
[SNIP]
> The question is, how do I go about partitioning gm0 from Fixit?
> I've seen nothing so far that describes how to go about creating
> multiple partitions on a gmirror (or on anything else, for that
> matter) without either using sysinstall or having to understand
> gpart.

I've used something like this from the Fixit console (using /dev/ad0
as an example):

Fixit# kldload /dist/boot/kernel/geom_mirror.ko
Fixit# gmirror -v -b round-robin gm0 /dev/ad0
Fixit# fdisk -v -B -I /dev/mirror/gm0
Fixit# bsdlabel -w -B /dev/mirror/gm0s1

Partition with:
# bsdlabel -e /dev/mirror/gm0s1

Create a UFS file system (with Soft Updates):
Fixit# newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1a

Mount the newly created file system:
Fixit# mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1a /mnt

...then follow one of the procedures for doing a "manual" install from
fixit, e.g.

 Fixit# cd /dist/8.1-*
 Fixit# export DESTDIR=/mnt
 Fixit# for dir in base catpages dict doc games info lib32 manpages ports; \
          do (cd $dir ; ./install.sh) ; done
 Fixit# cd src ; ./install.sh all
 Fixit# cd ../kernels ; ./install.sh generic
 Fixit# cd /mnt/boot ; cp -Rlp GENERIC/* /mnt/boot/kernel/

[taken from http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot/Mirror]

> OK, given the system's age I will presume that it is not, thus
> (I suppose) no reason to deal with gpart.

I've used GPT partitioning on all of my machines, ranging from a
circa-2000 Toshiba Pentium 3 junker to a new i7 Quad Core beast. No
problem so far, and it is a lot more logical (IMHO) than the
fdisk/bsdlabel method. Also, the "manual" installation method
demonstrated above hasn't failed me yet.

Having stated all of this, I will say that I spent time reading the
handbook, quite a few man pages, and a a wiki article here and there
-- and I still feel only slightly more comfortable than I did after my
first successful attempt! It is starting to "come together" for me
now, finally :)

Well, I hope this helps you get unstuck...

Good Luck!

-Brandon