Vinum problems in 5.3-BETA7?

[Paul Mather]

On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 07:52, Patrick M. Hausen wrote:

> We have a production system that runs on a vinum system drive
> configured like this:

[[Configuration omitted.]]

> It's currently running fine with FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE-p10.
> 
> After upgrading to 5.3-BETA7, buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel
> and reboot the system stops:
> 
> vinum: loaded
> vinum: no drives found
> 
> That's it. Of course it complains that it can't mount /dev/vinum/root.
> 
> The list of detected GEOM devices at the "mountroot> " prompt
> includes ad0s1h, ad1s1h, ad0s1, ad1s1, ad0, ad1 and some more
> partitions.
> 
> 
> Where do I go from here? Is this expected behaviour due to the ongoing
> GEOM changes or should I go read Greg's "how to debug vinum problems"
> document? I will do that, no problem. Just want to know if it makes
> sense at all, because now everyone might tell me "vinum is known broken in
> 5.3" or similar.

Vinum is known broken in 5.3. :-)  You should be using geom_vinum
instead.  It will largely be a drop-in replacement for your above Vinum
configuration.  (I am using it on a similar root-on-vinum setup.)  The
main changes are these:

1) Load "geom_vinum" in /boot/loader.conf, e.g., add
'geom_vinum_load="YES"' to /boot/loader.conf.  This will auto-detect
your Vinum on-disk configuration during boot.  You don't need any
rc.conf glue with geom_vinum.

2) Change "vinum" to "gvinum" in /etc/fstab.  E.g., use
"/dev/gvinum/root" instead of "/dev/vinum/root"

3) The userland utility is "gvinum" instead of "vinum".

I am using geom_vinum on a root-on-vinum configuration under 6-CURRENT
since before RELENG_5 was branched, and I believe the same holds true
for RELENG_5 and HEAD as far as the above three points are concerned.

I don't know if there are plans to replace vinum entirely with gvinum
(and drop the "g" prefix) for 5.3-RELEASE.  Lukas Ertl would know.

Cheers,

Paul.
-- 
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

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