Re: [9fans] kenfs
hi erik, i havent seen much discussion on soekris cards in 9fans and inferno-list. so i wish people interested in embedded boards consider soekris. also, by support i meant support for controller devices (SATA support?/ethernet support (5501 says VIA VTA6105M chips or so)?, etc). i mean, more than just getting it up and running. may be, i need a first hand expericence with the board before mentioning this. regards dharani On 2/24/08, erik quanstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > couple of questions related to this posting as well as your previous one > on > > soekris box: > > > > - will this work for 5501 as well? > > - did u get as many as 8 ethernet ports working? > > > > i am thinking of getting 5501 and trying plan9/inferno. > > i don't know. i don't have a 5501. by the way i should have > made it clear that plan 9 does run on this box as ken fs running > does not imply that plan 9 does. > > > i wish plan9/inferno community provides more support for soekris > products. > > earlier, i used to wonder why ron minnich didnt go for soekris boards > for > > his projects. > > plan 9 has run on the 4501 for quite some time. > > - erik > >
Re: [9fans] kenfs
> couple of questions related to this posting as well as your previous one on > soekris box: > > - will this work for 5501 as well? > - did u get as many as 8 ethernet ports working? > > i am thinking of getting 5501 and trying plan9/inferno. i don't know. i don't have a 5501. by the way i should have made it clear that plan 9 does run on this box as ken fs running does not imply that plan 9 does. > i wish plan9/inferno community provides more support for soekris products. > earlier, i used to wonder why ron minnich didnt go for soekris boards for > his projects. plan 9 has run on the 4501 for quite some time. - erik
Re: [9fans] kenfs
hi erik, >if anyone is interested in a soekris 4501 fs, contact me off list. >judging by the size of my worm, a 4GB CF should be enough to >run for several years. or, use a small boot CF and an aoe target. couple of questions related to this posting as well as your previous one on soekris box: - will this work for 5501 as well? - did u get as many as 8 ethernet ports working? i am thinking of getting 5501 and trying plan9/inferno. here are the things i like about soekris: - surprisingly, their products have a long life (in terms of availability) compared to other embedded boards from other companies - price is reasonable and affordable. prices dont change much whether an individual orders or a company orders, one or 1000 boards, etc. Also one can order any number of boards (no limit on min. qty) - many OSes are known to run i wish plan9/inferno community provides more support for soekris products. earlier, i used to wonder why ron minnich didnt go for soekris boards for his projects. regards dharani
[9fans] kenfs
i put a new version of the kenfs code we're running at coraid on sources. /n/sources/contrib/quanstro/src/myfs. we continue to see good performance and the most serious problem encountered so far is that the default route was configured incorrectly requiring a creative dynamic route for sntp. this version fixes a locking problem in send and recv when called spllo and a few bugs with odd configurations. it also deprecates devsd code. the huge size of the myricom firmware lead to devices and ethernet controllers. these are controlled by tables in $conf/etherctlr.c and $conf/devtab.c. this has reduced the size of the kernel built for the soekris 4501 (aska) to 177994 bytes compressed. finally, the partition code has been reworked so that fdisk or prep partitions may be used in addition to old-style partitions. this allowed the boot code to use a Device instead of a one-off construct for the nvr file. thus the nvr file for aska is nvr=ph0"9fat"!fs.nvr where ph0"9fat" is a regular Device and fs.nvr is a fat file name. the same syntax may be used in filsys declarations. the main filesystem on my new (unfinished) fs is declared as filsys main cpe2.0"kcache"e2.1 since i need just a few gb of cache, using an fdisk partition allows me to archive linux junk to the rest of that partition without opening an lba accountancy. for performance reasons, it would make less sense for the cache and worm to share a partitioned target. the floppy as been temporarly (?) broken by this change. if anyone is interested in a soekris 4501 fs, contact me off list. judging by the size of my worm, a 4GB CF should be enough to run for several years. or, use a small boot CF and an aoe target. - erik
Re: [9fans] kenfs (look ma, no disks)
> Any chance this could live in sources? Even if kenfs is not part of > the distribution anymore, it would be nice to have 'unofficial' place > where people who still want it can find the latest version. > > uriel that's the eventual goal. i've made a number of changes. i'd like to have a way to track how (or if) the new version is being used. - erik
Re: [9fans] kenfs (look ma, no disks)
Any chance this could live in sources? Even if kenfs is not part of
the distribution anymore, it would be nice to have 'unofficial' place
where people who still want it can find the latest version.
uriel
On 9/9/07, erik quanstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> i've been working on kenfs as we needed a way to have
> automatic offsite backup. i am using aoe to do the offsite
> bit so theoretically, one could have a kenfs with no disks.
> i've also rewritten the marvell sata driver, added the intel
> ahci driver, revamped mmu code. finally, i have a slight
> change to the on-disk layout of the c part of the cw that
> results in a 20x speed improvement. (this change can be
> used on old fses if you dump and then recover using
> the new code.) i've also implemented a new compile-time
> option "fastworm" that inhibits copying from the worm to
> the cache.
>
> my current testing setup is
>
> filsys main cp(a0)0.10{a1e99.0[e64.<0-3>]}
>
> where
>
> dev driver target
> a? ahci
> e99.0 aoe sr421
> e64.? aoe pata shelf accessed over wireless link.
>
> if you have any interest in this, please drop me a note
> with the hardware you're using and i'll figure out how
> to arrange access.
>
> - erik
>
>
[9fans] kenfs (look ma, no disks)
i've been working on kenfs as we needed a way to have
automatic offsite backup. i am using aoe to do the offsite
bit so theoretically, one could have a kenfs with no disks.
i've also rewritten the marvell sata driver, added the intel
ahci driver, revamped mmu code. finally, i have a slight
change to the on-disk layout of the c part of the cw that
results in a 20x speed improvement. (this change can be
used on old fses if you dump and then recover using
the new code.) i've also implemented a new compile-time
option "fastworm" that inhibits copying from the worm to
the cache.
my current testing setup is
filsys main cp(a0)0.10{a1e99.0[e64.<0-3>]}
where
dev driver target
a? ahci
e99.0 aoe sr421
e64.? aoe pata shelf accessed over wireless link.
if you have any interest in this, please drop me a note
with the hardware you're using and i'll figure out how
to arrange access.
- erik
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware
> There's still the question of how to initialise the second device in > the mirror-to-be. I would have copyworm-ed f(w5w1) to f(w2). I'm > nervous that copying from cw0f(w5w1) may not yield exactly the same > bytes as copying from f(w5w1). Ok, thanks! I've tried looking at the code but (at this time of day) initially only got more confused - /sys/src/fs/port/config.c:^wormof seems not get the worm part of a cw, which is what I would expect it to do (instead, it seems to take are of a cw within an fworm?). I then realized that the copyworm code I run today was older: /n/sourcesdump/2003/0314/plan9/sys/src/fs/port/config.c it did copy the f(w5w1) part of cw0f(w5w1) (the written blocks). copying worm from f(w5w1) to fw2, starting in 8 seconds limit 1505835 copying worm fworm: read 0 0 not written fworm: read 1 1 not written block 2 Tue Oct 17 15:57:26 2006 [...] copied 1505835 blocks from f(w5w1) to fw2 Even earlier today I had tried the same with the slightly newer kernel (code from march 14 2003) which I had patched to allow recover to work, and then it not only did not give exactly the same bytes, but it failed: copying worm from cw0f(w5w1) (worm cw0f(w5w1)) to fw2, starting in 8 seconds devsize(cw0f(w5w1)) = 1505936 fworm: read 0 i/o error reading cw0f(w5w1) block 0 panic: no blocks to copy on cw0f(w5w1) I did not compare in detail, but the code seems to be essentially the same as in the current version on sources. my first superblock seems to be block 2 - that explains fworm: read 0? related to the 'fworm of mirror' vs. 'mirror of fworms': I guess that copyworm would not be able to deal with the case of 'cached worm where worm is mirror of fake worms' (or would it?) Axel. (turns out I have to redo the copy anyway because confused by the big numbers of half-k and 4k blocks I chose a too small w2 disk that won't allow much growth - but is was big enough to hold the written part of f(w5w1) so I guess at least I have a backup)
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware
Good point; I was thinking of cw0f{(w5w1)w2}. cw0{f(w5w1)f(w2)}, or
equivalently cw0{f(w5w1)fw2}, should work if (w5w1) is smaller than
w2. The mirror device will limit both devices to the size of the
smaller one, so if w2 is smaller than (w5w1), f(w5w1) will be
truncated in the mirror {f(w5w1)fw2}.
There's still the question of how to initialise the second device in
the mirror-to-be. I would have copyworm-ed f(w5w1) to f(w2). I'm
nervous that copying from cw0f(w5w1) may not yield exactly the same
bytes as copying from f(w5w1).
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware
> The disks in a mirror need to start out with identical
> contents. If (w5w1) is exactly the same size as w2,
> I think you'll be okay. If they aren't exactly the
> same size, the fake-worm blocks-written bitmaps should
> be in different places, thus it won't work right.
They are not the same size.
Just checking (and increasing, with your help :-) my understanding:
It isn't the case that in a config of cw0{f(w5w1)f(w2)}
there are two fake-worm pseudo devices that each take care of
their own bitmaps, which thus need not be at the same place?
Or is that a rather weird config, and should in a
c config the always directly be a worm
or fake-worm device?
Whereas in a config of cw0f{(w5w1)w2} there is a single
fake-worm pseudo device and thus single bitmap, stored
(I guess) at the same place on resp. (w5w1) and w2?
(position will depend on computed size of {(w5w1)w2}
I guess, which would be the minimum of sizes of (w5w1) and w2)
> If you can boot your file server as a CPU server,
> you can use dd to copy disks.
I did not yet explore that option - have to fiddle a bit to
take root filesystem from somewhere (my 'selfcontained'
cpu/auth server, or laptop, or maybe sources). Will work out ok.
I've also considered booting a live cd as a 'rescue disk' -
but then I'd have to connect a cd drive first... :-)
Thanks (a lot!) for your help so far - it's much appreciated!
Axel.
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware
The disks in a mirror need to start out with identical contents. If (w5w1) is exactly the same size as w2, I think you'll be okay. If they aren't exactly the same size, the fake-worm blocks-written bitmaps should be in different places, thus it won't work right. If you can boot your file server as a CPU server, you can use dd to copy disks.
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware
> Right, you could just configure the cache as mirrored disks and
> recover main. The mirror device does not copy new devices when they
> are added to a mirror; you'd need to copydev first (or boot as a cpu
> server and use dd) to copy the original disk to its mirror disks).
finally I had time to look at my fs.
seems I'm lucky: the fake worm is ok.
I've replaced the cache disk and recovered; I encountered
'panic: fworm: rbounds 13219302' (my fs kernel is a bit old (2003))
but the fix mentioned here a while ago (fix conf.firstsb) worked.
since I wanted a backup (and if possible: mirror) 'right now' even
though my /sys/src/fs is out of date and does not yet have copydev,
and I don't want to pull a lot of changes from sources right now,
I tried copyworm
from: filsys main cw0f(w5w1)
to:filsys output f(w2)
this seems to have worked, but I have not yet accessed the result
(just switched off the machine while it looped after copyworm).
now my real question is:
would it be ok to use the copy f(w2) as mirror,
as infilsys main cw0{f(w5w1)f(w2)}?
Axel.
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware
Right, you could just configure the cache as mirrored disks and recover main. The mirror device does not copy new devices when they are added to a mirror; you'd need to copydev first (or boot as a cpu server and use dd) to copy the original disk to its mirror disks). You should only use "config w0" when you initialise the configuration. Thereafter, the file server kernel reads that configuration (from w0 in this case, which name it gets from plan9.nvr) at start-up and merges any changes due to config commands that you then type. Typing a "filsys" command for an existing file system will replace the old definition; "filsys scratch" would delete any definition for a file system named "scratch"; and declaring a file system with a name as yet unknown will add the file system. The panic after copydev is indeed to force a reboot and give an opportunity for reconfiguration. I understand your caution. There was a period when I was configuring kenfs daily or pretty close to it, but that's certainly unusual.
Re: [9fans] kenfs config? (was: OT: scsi sense error code hardware error 40 83?)
> I can't help with the sense code; I suspect that the component number
> (NN) is specific to the manufacturer and device.
I suspected that too. unfortunately, even though the manufactor site
still lists the disk and has info like jumper settings, it doesn't
have those details. maybe their 'scsimax' thing will tell me something.
> As for replacing your cache disk, yes, your plan sounds right. Since
> your entire cache is being replaced, there is no memory anywhere else
> of how big it was, so you can replace it with a disk or disks of any
> size. "recover main" rebuilds your cache disk from the (fake) worm.
thanks for confirming.
different question:
what is the safe procedure to add one (or more?) mirror disks to the
fake cached worm of an existing kenfs? like one mirror disk for the
fake worm, and a different one to the cache?
I gues your answer above implies that for the cache it would be ok to
just configure the new filesys with mirror-ed cache and then recover.
The fsconconfig man page seems to suggest that for the mirror
of the fake worm it would also be sufficient to just specify
the mirror, with the existing fake worm device at the left.
{device...}
A pseudo-device formed from the mirroring of the first
device in the list onto all the others. [...]
Is this right? or is an explicit copydev of the fake worm needed
(or advisable?)
one more:
when extending an existing config say on w0, one does
config w0(identify config location + erase current)
mention all old config items
add new config items
end
right? or is there a way to just extend an existing config?
one last question, mere curiosity:
fsconfig(8) also says:
Copydev will copy the device from-dev to the device to-dev.
block by block, and panic.
why the panic? to be allowed (forced?) to reboot and config?
sorry for all these questions, but configuring a kenfs is not
something I (any of us?) daily do, and experience some years
ago taught me to be a bit careful (yeah, it's in the archives)
(not that I learned enough to set up mirroring before I need it :-(
Thanks, a lot!
Axel.
