On 2020-09-07, tom ryan <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 7/9/20 5:07 pm, Walt wrote: >> I have a new server on order that should arrive in a few days. >> It's intended purpose is to replace my current firewall. It has no CD >> and so I'll make and use a bootable flash drive as described in the >> Installation Guide section of the FAQ. >> >> The server will have a second ssd drive and so I got to wondering >> if it might be useful to create a bootable partition on the drive and >> install the installation on it. >> >> I'm probably not going to do this but I am curious about whether it >> would work very well. I'll probably install a second copy of the OS on >> the second drive and mirror all configuration files to it so that if >> anything happens to the main drive, I can turn around and boot from the >> second and be up and running almost immediately.
It's possible, but it's a challenge to keep them in sync. > Maybe you want to just run them in a softraid mirror... > > https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#softraidDI This helps with some types of problem (drive failure), but doesn't help with fat-fingered commands or bad upgrades that periodic or manual syncs would protect against. My suggestions would be to keep the config files in a management system of some sort. Whether that's a full-blown config management system like ansible/salt, one of the simpler tools like rset, judo, rdist, or even just commiting config files directly to a version control repository, they will all help get a system back up and running much more quickly. Keeping config changes to the minimum necessary helps too of course.
