[pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
I've been happily using 1.2.3-RC1 for many months now on a Soekris net5501 and a 100GB 2.5 SATA drive. I like the idea of an embedded system on a CF card, but that's not possible or advisable for me as I'm running the squid and freeswitch packages. I was wondering however, if it would be difficult, inadvisable, or of no advantage to hack together an embedded system to run from a read-only CF card that mounts certain filesystems on writable media, such as a hard drive, where temp data such as disk cache and audio recordings would live. I don't know a tonne about the innards of pfsense and I've never played with the nanoBSD version. Is this something that would work in principle? Would it exploit the benefits of a read-only root filesystem (cold-reset resiliency, improved fs security, system responsiveness)? Would it require a lot of messing, besides manually altering /etc/fstab? Just wondering. db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On 12/11/2009 10:50 AM, David Burgess wrote: I've been happily using 1.2.3-RC1 for many months now on a Soekris net5501 and a 100GB 2.5 SATA drive. I like the idea of an embedded system on a CF card, but that's not possible or advisable for me as I'm running the squid and freeswitch packages. I was wondering however, if it would be difficult, inadvisable, or of no advantage to hack together an embedded system to run from a read-only CF card that mounts certain filesystems on writable media, such as a hard drive, where temp data such as disk cache and audio recordings would live. I've thought a bit about this in the past, and it might be doable in the future or via some kind of filesystem management package, if someone were to come up with one, but it isn't something that would be recommended (at least not yet) or supported. I don't know a tonne about the innards of pfsense and I've never played with the nanoBSD version. Is this something that would work in principle? Would it exploit the benefits of a read-only root filesystem (cold-reset resiliency, The moment you have a drive mounted rw, you lose this. :-) improved fs security, system responsiveness)? Would it require a lot of messing, besides manually altering /etc/fstab? You'd also have to alter the packages (or create appropriate symlinks if they can be followed by the application) to point those directories or files at the new storage location. Some packages might have built-in path settings and you'd just need to change the paths and hit save. Otherwise, you may need to alter the code for the package. As with most things, if you want to experiment, it's up to you, but do so with caution (and plenty of backups) and remember that you'll be out on a limb without a net to catch you if something breaks. Jim - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Jim Pingle li...@pingle.org wrote: (cold-reset resiliency, The moment you have a drive mounted rw, you lose this. :-) Well you lose it on the rw partitions, but if the core system is mounted to RAM from a read-only filesystem, then at least the core system has that resiliency, no? As with most things, if you want to experiment, it's up to you, but do so with caution (and plenty of backups) and remember that you'll be out on a limb without a net to catch you if something breaks. Sounds like I have a tinkering project (to add to the list!) :) Seems to me with some interest and support it could eventually become a standard method for running a package manager on an embedded (/hybrid) system I'd be interested to know if anybody has been down this road at all. db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
Hello David... This is eaxctly what I want to work on :) I came to this list and was given only two options... 1) use nanofrebsd... 2) use regular hardrive... I din't like either one My needs were exactly like yoursFreeSwitch and Squid... I am pretty good with hardware, but terrible with software... :( I have such beast running, but I am not happy with the setup, since I am using a microdrive... What I did was a dual CF card adapter...the CF is read onlyand the microdrive...well..you know...all the other stuff... I will like to replace the microdrive with an electronic storage device, but haven't found one not affected by the limitations of the writes on the hardware... :( Anyone know more about this?? - Original Message - From: David Burgess apt@gmail.com To: support support@pfsense.com Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 10:50 AM Subject: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage? I've been happily using 1.2.3-RC1 for many months now on a Soekris net5501 and a 100GB 2.5 SATA drive. I like the idea of an embedded system on a CF card, but that's not possible or advisable for me as I'm running the squid and freeswitch packages. I was wondering however, if it would be difficult, inadvisable, or of no advantage to hack together an embedded system to run from a read-only CF card that mounts certain filesystems on writable media, such as a hard drive, where temp data such as disk cache and audio recordings would live. I don't know a tonne about the innards of pfsense and I've never played with the nanoBSD version. Is this something that would work in principle? Would it exploit the benefits of a read-only root filesystem (cold-reset resiliency, improved fs security, system responsiveness)? Would it require a lot of messing, besides manually altering /etc/fstab? Just wondering. db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Manny A. Wise mannyw...@gmail.com wrote: My needs were exactly like yoursFreeSwitch and Squid... I am pretty good with hardware, but terrible with software... :( My software background is a lot more linux than BSD, but a person can learn ;) Some cursory investigation reveals: # find / -name freeswitch /usr/local/www/packages/freeswitch /usr/local/freeswitch /usr/local/freeswitch/bin/freeswitch # find / -name squid /usr/local/sbin/squid /usr/local/share/doc/squid /usr/local/share/examples/squid /usr/local/etc/squid /usr/local/libexec/squid /usr/local/squid /var/mail/squid /var/squid This is from a full generic install. If one mounted a dedicated device at /usr/local it appears freeswitch would live happily there. I'm not sure what's going on with squid, as it appears to have cache folders in 2 or three different places. The next question would be whether it would be easier to graft individual packages or a package manager into the embedded install, or to modify the full install to have it mount the root fs into RAM. If I understand history correctly, the latter method was abandoned for embedded pfsense in favour of the nanobsd-based image, which leads me to think that the former method is probably less off the beaten path. db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On 11/12/09 15:50, David Burgess wrote: I've been happily using 1.2.3-RC1 for many months now on a Soekris net5501 and a 100GB 2.5 SATA drive. I like the idea of an embedded system on a CF card, but that's not possible or advisable for me as I'm running the squid and freeswitch packages. can you do overlay file systems on freeBSD, so that the base OS and config is read-only and you overlay a read-write file system at a very late stage in booting IF that overlay is uncorrupted? when you've made changes to config, if the worst happens simply boot without the overlay if the overlay is good and fine then push it down to the base file system by remounting r/w and copying down. hope this is clear? the other choice would be to have two bootable installs on the disk and rsync one to the when you're certain it's working OK, so you have an instant fallback Paul - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On 12/11/2009 12:22 PM, Paul Mansfield wrote: can you do overlay file systems on freeBSD, so that the base OS and config is read-only and you overlay a read-write file system at a very late stage in booting IF that overlay is uncorrupted? when you've made changes to config, if the worst happens simply boot without the overlay You can with unionfs. I'm not sure how well it's working these days in practice. (As far as being production ready for everyday use as opposed to used in the installer, etc) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Jim Pingle li...@pingle.org wrote: On 12/11/2009 12:22 PM, Paul Mansfield wrote: can you do overlay file systems on freeBSD, so that the base OS and config is read-only and you overlay a read-write file system at a very late stage in booting IF that overlay is uncorrupted? when you've made changes to config, if the worst happens simply boot without the overlay You can with unionfs. I'm not sure how well it's working these days in practice. (As far as being production ready for everyday use as opposed to used in the installer, etc) Well, it didn't take long for this conversation to go over my head. I've got some work to do to learn about overlay filesystems and unionfs. I do love a good learning project. db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On 12/11/2009 12:33 PM, David Burgess wrote: On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Jim Pingle li...@pingle.org wrote: On 12/11/2009 12:22 PM, Paul Mansfield wrote: can you do overlay file systems on freeBSD, so that the base OS and config is read-only and you overlay a read-write file system at a very late stage in booting IF that overlay is uncorrupted? when you've made changes to config, if the worst happens simply boot without the overlay You can with unionfs. I'm not sure how well it's working these days in practice. (As far as being production ready for everyday use as opposed to used in the installer, etc) Well, it didn't take long for this conversation to go over my head. I've got some work to do to learn about overlay filesystems and unionfs. I do love a good learning project. It would probably be much easier to alter only the settings of a package to point to an alternate storage location. You do not need to keep /usr/local stuff rw, it typically does not change (especially the binaries). There may be some system settings in /usr/local/etc/ that might need carried over, but if you can configure paths for things in freeswitch like you can in squid, it shouldn't be that hard. Squid would be easy: Make a new mount point, mount a filesystem, point the cache directory at /otherdrive/squid/cache/ instead of /var/squid/cache. Jim - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
On Dec 11, 2009, at 6:13 AM, Jim Pingle wrote: On 12/11/2009 10:50 AM, David Burgess wrote: I've been happily using 1.2.3-RC1 for many months now on a Soekris net5501 and a 100GB 2.5 SATA drive. I like the idea of an embedded system on a CF card, but that's not possible or advisable for me as I'm running the squid and freeswitch packages. I was wondering however, if it would be difficult, inadvisable, or of no advantage to hack together an embedded system to run from a read-only CF card that mounts certain filesystems on writable media, such as a hard drive, where temp data such as disk cache and audio recordings would live. I've thought a bit about this in the past, and it might be doable in the future or via some kind of filesystem management package, if someone were to come up with one, but it isn't something that would be recommended (at least not yet) or supported. I don't know a tonne about the innards of pfsense and I've never played with the nanoBSD version. Is this something that would work in principle? Would it exploit the benefits of a read-only root filesystem (cold-reset resiliency, The moment you have a drive mounted rw, you lose this. :-) improved fs security, system responsiveness)? Would it require a lot of messing, besides manually altering /etc/fstab? You'd also have to alter the packages (or create appropriate symlinks if they can be followed by the application) to point those directories or files at the new storage location. Some packages might have built-in path settings and you'd just need to change the paths and hit save. Otherwise, you may need to alter the code for the package. As with most things, if you want to experiment, it's up to you, but do so with caution (and plenty of backups) and remember that you'll be out on a limb without a net to catch you if something breaks. Jim - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org I might be missing the boat here, but what about using a 2.5 SSD instead of flash + normal HD? That way you get the benefit of solid state, plus you have the space performance for a regular file system so you can run all the packages you want. Granted, SSDs aren't the cheapest things around, but it seems like a simpler solution. I've been considering an SSD paired with a 19 Supermicro case + intel atom that was pointed out in another discussion thread. Besides the cost of the SSD, can anyone fill me in on why an SSD wouldn't be good for running the full version of PFsense with packages? Jeremy - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
I might be missing the boat here, but what about using a 2.5 SSD instead of flash + normal HD? That way you get the benefit of solid state, plus you have the space performance for a regular file system so you can run all the packages you want. Granted, SSDs aren't the cheapest things around, but it seems like a simpler solution. I've been considering an SSD paired with a 19 Supermicro case + intel atom that was pointed out in another discussion thread. Besides the cost of the SSD, can anyone fill me in on why an SSD wouldn't be good for running the full version of PFsense with packages? Seth recomends the relatively small Kingston 40GB ssd, it's based on the Intel controller and should be adequate for your purpose and the speed of it should approach light speed. However, do keep the partition smaller then the total size of the SSD. This will keep the performance of the SSD quite solid over time, regardless of brand and model. e.g. 1 32GB partition instead of spanning the full 40GB. A couple of gigabytes is enough to keep free unwritten blocks the SSD can use for remapping. 30GB of squid cache is a lot though. Regards, Seth - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
SSD work just fine.you don't need CF and SSDwith a single SSD 2.5 ide device it get the job done perfectly...BUT!! is always that butALL the SSD have limited life cycle even the industrial ones, yes, it's 10 million of writes...but you know some day, sooner or later is going to diedsure more later then sooner.. :) but we are looking for a definitive technical solution.. :) just picky people I gues. ;) . - Original Message - From: Jeremy Bennett jbenn...@obtusion.com To: support@pfsense.com Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 2:36 PM Subject: Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage? On Dec 11, 2009, at 6:13 AM, Jim Pingle wrote: On 12/11/2009 10:50 AM, David Burgess wrote: I've been happily using 1.2.3-RC1 for many months now on a Soekris net5501 and a 100GB 2.5 SATA drive. I like the idea of an embedded system on a CF card, but that's not possible or advisable for me as I'm running the squid and freeswitch packages. I was wondering however, if it would be difficult, inadvisable, or of no advantage to hack together an embedded system to run from a read-only CF card that mounts certain filesystems on writable media, such as a hard drive, where temp data such as disk cache and audio recordings would live. I've thought a bit about this in the past, and it might be doable in the future or via some kind of filesystem management package, if someone were to come up with one, but it isn't something that would be recommended (at least not yet) or supported. I don't know a tonne about the innards of pfsense and I've never played with the nanoBSD version. Is this something that would work in principle? Would it exploit the benefits of a read-only root filesystem (cold-reset resiliency, The moment you have a drive mounted rw, you lose this. :-) improved fs security, system responsiveness)? Would it require a lot of messing, besides manually altering /etc/fstab? You'd also have to alter the packages (or create appropriate symlinks if they can be followed by the application) to point those directories or files at the new storage location. Some packages might have built-in path settings and you'd just need to change the paths and hit save. Otherwise, you may need to alter the code for the package. As with most things, if you want to experiment, it's up to you, but do so with caution (and plenty of backups) and remember that you'll be out on a limb without a net to catch you if something breaks. Jim - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org I might be missing the boat here, but what about using a 2.5 SSD instead of flash + normal HD? That way you get the benefit of solid state, plus you have the space performance for a regular file system so you can run all the packages you want. Granted, SSDs aren't the cheapest things around, but it seems like a simpler solution. I've been considering an SSD paired with a 19 Supermicro case + intel atom that was pointed out in another discussion thread. Besides the cost of the SSD, can anyone fill me in on why an SSD wouldn't be good for running the full version of PFsense with packages? Jeremy - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
SSD woul definitely bring the power, speed sound benefits of flash. It only lacks the perfect recovery of a read-only root fs. A big improvement over spinning media nevertheless. Regarding reserved unused space on an SSD, Anand recently recommended 20% reserved, and more recently stated 'the more you reserve, the better it will perform' (paraphrasing). Note also that some SSD's already reserve space, though mostly the higher-end ones. db Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] hybrid storage?
apt@gmail.com schreef: SSD woul definitely bring the power, speed sound benefits of flash. It only lacks the perfect recovery of a read-only root fs. A big improvement over spinning media nevertheless. The writes should be fine really, worst case is that it will fail to write at some point. CF is really no magic bullet either, I have had a cheap CF card fail with a embedded install on it which prevents writes. So that is no panacea either. Swings the other way too though. The Apacer 133x 1GB card I purchased in 2006 which has been in my development box since that day with a full install on it, has been fine and has not failed me yet. Regarding reserved unused space on an SSD, Anand recently recommended 20% reserved, and more recently stated 'the more you reserve, the better it will perform' (paraphrasing). Note also that some SSD's already reserve space, though mostly the higher-end ones. Sidenote. /Better performance/Better performance _over time_. Not in the absolute sense. Just a few GB will do in pretty much all cases. Not like you are writing gigabytes at a time with squid either. Regards, Seth db Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
