Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?

[David Robillard]

On 8/31/06, Elliot Finley <efinleywork at efinley.com> wrote:
> Well yes, if you do it this way, you are correct.  Why not just install the
> OS on the smaller drive, skip the dump step and just use the installed drive
> as the first drive in your mirror.  That's how I've been doing it and it
> works great.
>
> I've got a write-up of the steps required to do this if you or anyone else
> needs them.  I also routinely disconnect one of the drives in my mirror
> before a major upgrade to the OS or ports so that if I mess it up, I can
> boot back to the previous state.  I have a write-up of the steps needed to
> do this remotely over ssh (again, if you or anyone else needs them).
>
> Elliot

Sounds like a good idea indeed. I've always followed Ralf S.
Engelschall's instructions at http://people.freebsd.org/~rse/mirror/
which involves using dump(8) to transfer the data onto the second disk
once it's setup as a gmirror provider.

I must admit I never thought back on those instructions because they
work very well. It was only recently that I had to deal with older
hardware for which I had to salvage some old 4Gb disk drives.

So, if you don't mind, I would very much appreciate if you could share
your documentation with me. In case you're interested, I can offer you
a space on my website should you want to have them online.

Cheers,

David
-- 
David Robillard
UNIX systems administrator & Oracle DBA
CISSP, RHCE & Sun Certified Security Administrator
Montreal: +1 514 966 0122