FreeBSD 8.0: RAID-1 using gpart, gvinum and gmirror

[Peter C. Lai]

Why are you using gvinum for RAID 1 instead of gmirror? The gmirror method 
for mirroring the boot partition is already well documented...

On 2009-12-02 12:35:17PM +0200, Marin Atanasov wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm going to make my partition mirrored using the geom utilities, but
> however I've noticed that I cannot use the same way I used to do it under
> 7.2 and 8.0-RC1.
> 
> Here's the situation - I tried a lot of times to make my root partition
> mirrored using gvinum, but each time when I boot in the new partition I'm
> unable to boot from it.. So instead of using gvinum for the root partition
> I've decided to use gmirror - and it works!
> 
> I did it the following way - two NOT identical disks are added to the
> system.
> 
>   - 1 slices on the first disk
>   - 2 slices on the second one (the 1st slice is the size of the root
> partition which is on the 1st slice on the 1st disk)
> 
> Right after a fresh minimal install, I go to single-user mode and create the
> mirror:
> 
> # gmirror label -vb round-robin gm0 /dev/ad0s1a
> 
> Installing bootstap code on the second disk (in case I need to boot later
> from it):
> # fdisk -BI /dev/ad4s1
> # bsdlabel -wB /dev/ad4s1
> # newfs -O2 /dev/ad4s1
> # newfs -O2 -U /dev/ad4s2
> 
> And then inserting the second component of the mirror:
> # gmirror insert gm0 /dev/ad4s1
> 
> And this is how I was doing a mirror for the root partition. For the other
> partitions - /usr, /var, /tmp, swap I used gvinum following a different
> articles, howtos and eventually it worked. The complete scenario of how I
> did the mirror for the other partitions is here (sorry, it's too long to
> just copy/paste it in the lists):
> http://www.daemonforums.org/showpost.php?p=27010&postcount=3
> 
> If I can say it with little words - the way mirroring works for the other
> partitions was to overlap all the other partitions with one big vinum
> partition.
> 
> My problem now is that I cannot do this anymore, because I need to use gpart
> instead for creating the partitions, and using gpart I cannot create a vinum
> partition that will overlap the other partitions, so I cannot make any
> mirror for the other partitions.
> 
> Is there any other way of doing this?
> 
> I'm out of ideas now, perhaps you could help me out with this :)
> 
> Thanks and regards,
> Marin
> 
> -- 
> Marin Atanasov Nikolov
> dnaeon AT gmail DOT com
> daemon AT unix-heaven DOT org
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-- 
===========================================================
Peter C. Lai                 | Bard College at Simon's Rock
Systems Administrator        | 84 Alford Rd.
Information Technology Svcs. | Gt. Barrington, MA 01230 USA
peter AT simons-rock.edu     | (413) 528-7428
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