gmirror problem on 5.3-R i386 (SOLVED)

[Christian Hiris]

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On Saturday 15 January 2005 04:52, Doug Poland wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 12:12:28AM +0100, Christian Hiris wrote:
> > On Friday 14 January 2005 20:43, Doug Poland wrote:
>
> Yes, I tried it under both tcsh and sh.  I didn't take it apart the same
> way you did however.  Also, when size came up as 50000 (24MB) I knew
> something wasn't write and didn't pursue that further.  What did the
> command:
>
>   fdisk -v -B -I /dev/ad4
>
> do?  It would seem my mirror is correct and consistent.

The option -B initializes the bootcode in sector 0, option -I creates one 
slice that covers the whole disk (man fdisk).

> > > Question:  On line 27 we issue the command to...
> > > # instruct boot stage 2 loader on first disk to boot
> > > # with the boot stage 3 loader from the second disk
> > > # (mainly because BIOS might not allow easy booting from second ATA
> > > disk # or at least requires manual intervention on the console)
> > >
> > > So how do I get rid of that boot.config file?  Should I get rid of it?
> >
> > If you have a modern machine the BIOS (hopefully) can boot from every
> > harddisks that has a partition/slice on it with the active flag set. I
> > for myself use a bootmanager on every gmirror disk. You can install it
> > with boot0cfg(8) or sysinstall (I only would use boot0cfg, if your mirror
> > already has been set up).
>
> So I can safely remove /boot.config?  Otherwise wouldn't the boot stage
> 2 loader always then load boot stage 3 off disk 2?

Yes, I would remove it. I think, in case, that disk ad6 breaks, the system 
won't boot w/o manual interaction.

In general, it's the best, if you do some real life testing by pulling 
powercables off the drives. Normally you should be able to replace a disk on 
a running system. Assuming that disks are connected to different channels:
Replace the broken disk by a fresh, clean one, run 'atacontrol attach 
<channel#>' (or maybe 'atacontrol reinit <channel#>) and there you go. It's 
even possible to swap disks around between controller cards on a running 
machine. I tested this out on cheap Promise TX2 cards - worked like a 
charm :)

Cheers,
ch   

- -- 
Christian Hiris <4711 at chello.at> | OpenPGP KeyID 0x3BCA53BE 
OpenPGP-Key at hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net and http://pgp.mit.edu
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