Installing to RaidZ-1

[Brandon J. Wandersee]

Baho Utot writes:

> I want to reinstall my desktop system using a raidz-1 filesystem using 
> the current installation image for usb drive.   Reading the handbook I 
> find that bsdinstall will not do the installation I want.  I am using 4 
> 1TB drives and I want to partition to 800GB and install the raidz 
> there.  Can I create a raidz storage pool manually and then use 
> bsdinstall or will I have to manually install freebsd not using bsdinstall?
>
> How do I do this?

When the installer reaches the disk partitioning stage, it will present
you with a list of options, one of which is "Shell." This will drop you
to a shell instance where you can manually create your partitions and
your zpool. A brief message will appear when you first enter the shell
with basic instructions:

1. Mount your custom partitions with /mnt as the root of the system. In
   this case, use the `-R /mnt` flag when creating the pool so your new
   root ZFS filesystem is mounted there.

2. Create a custom fstab file and place it in /bsdinstall_etc. I'm not
   sure how necessary this is if you aren't using fstab to mount any ZFS
   filesystems; that is, I don't know if the installer will try to stick
   its own fstab into the installed system if a custom one isn't present.

Once you exit the shell the installer will proceed as normal: installing
everything to the mounted disks/filesystems, adding users, etc. After
the installation, you'll want to choose the option to drop to a shell
again in order to edit /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf, make sure no
invalid fstab file has been installed (if necessary) and set the
"bootfs=" property on your new pool.


-- 
::  Brandon J. Wandersee
::  brandon.wandersee at gmail.com
::  --------------------------------------------------
::  'The best design is as little design as possible.'
::  --- Dieter Rams ----------------------------------