gmirror Issues

[Volker]

On 12/23/-58 20:59, Joe Kelsey wrote:
> I am having a real hard time with gmirror. 
> I recently bought two new 400G SATA disks and I want to mirror them.  I
> think I am following the directions, but I am not sure.
> 
> I generally do the following steps:
> 
> edit /boot/loader.conf to add geom_mirror_load.
> reboot into single-user
> gmirror label -v -b round-robin gm0 ad4s1 ad6s1
> bsdlabel -w mirror/gm0
> bsdlabel -e mirror/gm0
> newfs mirror/gm0a

Joe,

check what `bsdlabel mirror/gm0' gives right after editing the
partitioning information and re-check that info after a reboot.
There might be an issue... Check if bsdlabel complains about
partition c not being sized well.

Could you please try to `gmirror unload' before doing anything and a
`gmirror load' right after labeling the mirror? Or just try a reboot
after labeling the mirror. If that does make a difference, it's a
sign I've been right with my last week's experience.

If you're still getting into trouble, you may want to zero out the
first sectors of the disk using `dd'.

When creating a 400 gig mirror, it will take a long time for the
mirror to complete and you're mirroring waste in the first step. I
would recommend to create the mirror with just one consumer, create
the partitions, newfs and then insert the 2nd consumer into the
mirror. Just to make sure, I would check the status of the mirror
using `gmirror status' and wait until its state is COMPLETE before
doing anything else.

BTW, do you really want to use a dangerously dedicated disk (by
using gm0X) without any slices?

HTH,

Volker