Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
At Fri, 1 Sep 2006 09:54:02 -0400, David Robillard wrote: 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. this has worked for me in the past: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2005/11/10/FreeBSD_Basics.html regards toni -- If you understand what you're doing, you're | toni at stderror dot at not learning anything. | Toni Schmidbauer -- Anonymous| ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
On 8/31/06, Elliot Finley [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
I'm setting up a remote server with two identical hard drives, running FreeBSD-6.1. I want to set the drives up as a mirror for data redundancy. I also want to be able to break the mirror when I need to update the OS or installed software, so that if anything goes wrong with the update on one drive I can boot back to the other one, or if all is well, re-establish the mirror and synchronise to the updated system. I have serial console access including BIOS console redirection. Based on web and Usenet/mailing list searches, gmirror looks more straightforward for this simple case, gvinum more flexible but poorly documented, and the most recent comments I can find (still all 6+ months ago) seem to suggest that gvinum hasn't completely stabilised for production yet. Is this a fair assessment? Are there any factors I've missed? Which solution is likely to suit the situation better? Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
I use gmirror for this very purpose. It works well. - Original Message - From: Jonathan McKeown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 5:25 AM Subject: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror? I'm setting up a remote server with two identical hard drives, running FreeBSD-6.1. I want to set the drives up as a mirror for data redundancy. I also want to be able to break the mirror when I need to update the OS or installed software, so that if anything goes wrong with the update on one drive I can boot back to the other one, or if all is well, re-establish the mirror and synchronise to the updated system. I have serial console access including BIOS console redirection. Based on web and Usenet/mailing list searches, gmirror looks more straightforward for this simple case, gvinum more flexible but poorly documented, and the most recent comments I can find (still all 6+ months ago) seem to suggest that gvinum hasn't completely stabilised for production yet. Is this a fair assessment? Are there any factors I've missed? Which solution is likely to suit the situation better? Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
I'm setting up a remote server with two identical hard drives, running FreeBSD-6.1. I want to set the drives up as a mirror for data redundancy. I also want to be able to break the mirror when I need to update the OS or installed software, so that if anything goes wrong with the update on one drive I can boot back to the other one, or if all is well, re-establish the mirror and synchronise to the updated system. I have serial console access including BIOS console redirection. Based on web and Usenet/mailing list searches, gmirror looks more straightforward for this simple case, gvinum more flexible but poorly documented, and the most recent comments I can find (still all 6+ months ago) seem to suggest that gvinum hasn't completely stabilised for production yet. Is this a fair assessment? Are there any factors I've missed? Which solution is likely to suit the situation better? Jonathan Hello Jonathan, I run gmirror on all machines which don't have a hardware RAID controller. I've had drive failures in the past and gmirror handled it very well. It's now a lot better under 6.1 then 5.x (mostly concerning the kernel dump area and the swapoff option in rc.conf(5)). Take a look at Ralf S. Engelschall's documentation on the subject: http://people.freebsd.org/~rse/mirror/ Bonus Tip of the day! If you ever have two disk drives which are not identical, such as these: ad0: 4112MB WDC AC24300L 09.09M08 at ata0-master UDMA33 ad3: 4028MB Maxtor 84320D4 NAVXAA21 at ata1-slave UDMA33 Then make sure you install FreeBSD on the bigger one (i.e. here that would be ad0) then setup gmirror. If you do the oposite, you will have a Consumers too small error when you try to bring the mirror together. Finally, keep in mind that gmirror is only good for RAID 1. If you need more powerfull volume management tools such as Veritas Volume Manager or Sun DiskSuite, then you need gvinum. Regards, David -- David Robillard UNIX systems administrator Oracle DBA CISSP, RHCE Sun Certified Security Administrator Montreal: +1 514 966 0122 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
- Original Message - From: David Robillard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jonathan McKeown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FreeBSD Questions Mailing List freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 11:17 AM Subject: Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror? Bonus Tip of the day! If you ever have two disk drives which are not identical, such as these: ad0: 4112MB WDC AC24300L 09.09M08 at ata0-master UDMA33 ad3: 4028MB Maxtor 84320D4 NAVXAA21 at ata1-slave UDMA33 Then make sure you install FreeBSD on the bigger one (i.e. here that would be ad0) then setup gmirror. If you do the oposite, you will have a Consumers too small error when you try to bring the mirror together. I could be wrong, but that seems backwards. Elliot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
- Original Message - From: David Robillard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jonathan McKeown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FreeBSD Questions Mailing List freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 11:17 AM Subject: Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror? Bonus Tip of the day! If you ever have two disk drives which are not identical, such as these: ad0: 4112MB WDC AC24300L 09.09M08 at ata0-master UDMA33 ad3: 4028MB Maxtor 84320D4 NAVXAA21 at ata1-slave UDMA33 Then make sure you install FreeBSD on the bigger one (i.e. here that would be ad0) then setup gmirror. If you do the oposite, you will have a Consumers too small error when you try to bring the mirror together. I could be wrong, but that seems backwards. Elliot ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
On 8/31/06, Elliot Finley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
ad0: 4112MB WDC AC24300L 09.09M08 at ata0-master UDMA33
ad3: 4028MB Maxtor 84320D4 NAVXAA21 at ata1-slave UDMA33
Then make sure you install FreeBSD on the bigger one (i.e. here that
would be ad0) then setup gmirror. If you do the oposite, you will have
a Consumers too small error when you try to bring the mirror
together.
I could be wrong, but that seems backwards.
I know, that's also what I thought before I had the problem. (hence
the Tip of Day!)
It's quite easy to understand when you think about it. Let's say we
have the same disk drives as above in which ad0 is bigger then ad3.
So you install the OS on the smaller ad3 disk first. Then you setup
gmirror on the bigger disk ad0. You then dump(8) the OS from ad3 onto
the broken mirror gm0 which is made up of ad0. Next you reboot on gm0
(hence on ad0). You clear ad3 which is not used anymore and try to
`sudo gmirror insert gm0 /dev/ad3` = WRONG!
Why? Because what you're actually doing is trying to synchronise a
bigger submirror disk (ad0) onto a smaller submirror disk (ad3). Hence
gmirror(8) complains that the container is too small.
What you want to do is the oposite. Which is to first install FreeBSD
on the bigger drive, then setup a broken submirror gm0 onto the
smaller disk. Dump(8) FreeBSD onto this new gm0 mirror. Reboot on that
gm0 mirror. Then finally synchronise the small submirror onto the
bigger disk onto which you had FreeBSD installed first.
But be my guest, try it out and you'll see :)
Here's what you get once the whole thing is finished:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ {336}$ gmirror list
Geom name: gm0
State: COMPLETE
Components: 2
Balance: round-robin
Slice: 4096
Flags: NONE
GenID: 0
SyncID: 1
ID: 2054366258
Providers:
1. Name: mirror/gm0
Mediasize: 4223729152 (3.9G)
Sectorsize: 512
Mode: r5w5e6
Consumers:
1. Name: ad0
Mediasize: 4311982080 (4.0G)
Sectorsize: 512
Mode: r1w1e1
State: ACTIVE
Priority: 0
Flags: NONE
GenID: 0
SyncID: 1
ID: 4020171026
2. Name: ad3
Mediasize: 4223729664 (3.9G)
Sectorsize: 512
Mode: r1w1e1
State: ACTIVE
Priority: 0
Flags: NONE
GenID: 0
SyncID: 1
ID: 411377980
Cheers,
David
--
David Robillard
UNIX systems administrator Oracle DBA
CISSP, RHCE Sun Certified Security Administrator
Montreal: +1 514 966 0122
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Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
- Original Message - From: David Robillard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Elliot Finley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Jonathan McKeown [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FreeBSD Questions Mailing List freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:08 PM Subject: Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror? On 8/31/06, Elliot Finley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ad0: 4112MB WDC AC24300L 09.09M08 at ata0-master UDMA33 ad3: 4028MB Maxtor 84320D4 NAVXAA21 at ata1-slave UDMA33 Then make sure you install FreeBSD on the bigger one (i.e. here that would be ad0) then setup gmirror. If you do the oposite, you will have a Consumers too small error when you try to bring the mirror together. I could be wrong, but that seems backwards. I know, that's also what I thought before I had the problem. (hence the Tip of Day!) It's quite easy to understand when you think about it. Let's say we have the same disk drives as above in which ad0 is bigger then ad3. So you install the OS on the smaller ad3 disk first. Then you setup gmirror on the bigger disk ad0. You then dump(8) the OS from ad3 onto the broken mirror gm0 which is made up of ad0. Next you reboot on gm0 (hence on ad0). You clear ad3 which is not used anymore and try to `sudo gmirror insert gm0 /dev/ad3` = WRONG! 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 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mirroring: gvinum or gmirror?
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 I for one would like to see your writeup. As I'm starting to experiment with gmirror I think it would be helpful. John. -- - John F Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
