Re: [zfs-discuss] zpool split failing
Hi Cindy, Tried out your example below in a vbox env, and detaching a device from a pool makes that device simply unavailable. and simply cannot be re-imported. I then tried setting up a mirrored rpool within a vbox env, agreed one device is not USB however, when booted into the rpool, split worked, I then tried booting directly into the rpool on the faulty laptop, and split still failed. My only conclusion for failure is - The rpool I'm attempting to split has a LOT of history been around for some 2 years now, so has gone through a lot of upgrades etc, there may be some ZFS history there that's not letting this happen, BTW the version is 33 which is current. - or is it possible that one of the devices being a USB device is causing the failure ? I don't know. My reason for splitting the pool was so I could attach the clean USB rpool to another laptop and simply attach the disk from the new laptop, let it resilver, installgrub to new laptop disk device and boot it up and I would be back in action. As a workaround I'm trying to simply attach my USB rpool to the new laptop and use zfs replace to effectively replace the offline device with the new laptop disk device. So far so good, 12% resilvering, so fingers crossed this will work. As an aside, I have noticed that on the old laptop, it would not boot if the USB part of the mirror was not attached to the laptop, successful boot could only be achieved when both mirror devices were online. Is this a know issue with ZFS ? bug ? cheers Matt On 04/16/12 10:05 PM, Cindy Swearingen wrote: Hi Matt, I don't have a way to reproduce this issue and I don't know why this is failing. Maybe someone else does. I know someone who recently split a root pool running the S11 FCS release without problems. I'm not a fan of root pools on external USB devices. I haven't tested these steps in a while but you might try these steps instead. Make sure you have a recent snapshot of your rpool on the unhealthy laptop. 1. Ensure that the existing root pool and disks are healthy. # zpool status -x 2. Detach the USB disk. # zpool detach rpool disk-name 3. Connect the USB disk to the new laptop. 4. Force import the pool on the USB disk. # zpool import -f rpool rpool2 5. Device cleanup steps, something like: Boot from media and import rpool2 as rpool. Make sure the device info is visible. Reset BIOS to boot from this disk. On 04/16/12 04:12, Matt Keenan wrote: Hi Attempting to split a mirrored rpool and fails with error : Unable to split rpool: pool already exists I have a laptop with main disk mirrored to an external USB. However as the laptop is not too healthy I'd like to split the pool into two pools and attach the external drive to another laptop and mirror it to the new laptop. What I did : - Booted laptop into an live DVD - Import the rpool: $ zpool import rpool - Attempt to split : $ zpool split rpool rpool-ext - Error message shown and split fails : Unable to split rpool: pool already exists - So I tried exporting the pool and re-importing with a different name and I still get the same error. There are no other zpools on the system, both zpool list and zpool export return nothing other than the rpool I've just imported. I'm somewhat stumped... any ideas ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zpool split failing
On 04/17/12 01:00 PM, Jim Klimov wrote: 2012-04-17 14:47, Matt Keenan wrote: - or is it possible that one of the devices being a USB device is causing the failure ? I don't know. Might be, I've got little experience with those beside LiveUSB imagery ;) My reason for splitting the pool was so I could attach the clean USB rpool to another laptop and simply attach the disk from the new laptop, let it resilver, installgrub to new laptop disk device and boot it up and I would be back in action. If the USB disk split-off were to work, I'd rather try booting the laptop off the USB disk, if BIOS permits, or I'd boot off a LiveCD/LiveUSB (if Solaris 11 has one - or from installation media and break out into a shell) and try to import the rpool from USB disk and then attach the laptop's disk to it to resilver. This is exactly what I am doing, booted new laptop into LiveCD, imported USB pool, and zpool replacing the old laptop disk device which is in degraded state, with the new laptop disk device (after I partitioned to keep windows install). As a workaround I'm trying to simply attach my USB rpool to the new laptop and use zfs replace to effectively replace the offline device with the new laptop disk device. So far so good, 12% resilvering, so fingers crossed this will work. Won't this overwrite the USB disk with the new laptop's (empty) disk? The way you describe it... No the offline disk in this instance is the old laptop's internal disk, the online device is the USB drive. As an aside, I have noticed that on the old laptop, it would not boot if the USB part of the mirror was not attached to the laptop, successful boot could only be achieved when both mirror devices were online. Is this a know issue with ZFS ? bug ? Shouldn't be as mirrors are to protect against the disk failures. What was your rpool's failmode zpool-level attribute? It might have some relevance, but should define kernel's reaction to catastrophic failures of the pool, and loss of a mirror's side IMHO should not be one?.. Try failmode=continue and see if that helps the rpool, to be certain. I think that's what the installer should have done. Exactly what I would have thought ZFS should actually help here not hinder. From what I can see the default failmode as set by install is wait which is exactly what is happening when I attempt to boot. Just tried setting zpool failmode=continue and unfortunately still fails to boot, failmode=wait is definitely the default. cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] zpool split failing
Hi Attempting to split a mirrored rpool and fails with error : Unable to split rpool: pool already exists I have a laptop with main disk mirrored to an external USB. However as the laptop is not too healthy I'd like to split the pool into two pools and attach the external drive to another laptop and mirror it to the new laptop. What I did : - Booted laptop into an live DVD - Import the rpool: $ zpool import rpool - Attempt to split : $ zpool split rpool rpool-ext - Error message shown and split fails : Unable to split rpool: pool already exists - So I tried exporting the pool and re-importing with a different name and I still get the same error. There are no other zpools on the system, both zpool list and zpool export return nothing other than the rpool I've just imported. I'm somewhat stumped... any ideas ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Accessing Data from a detached device.
Hi, As an addendum to this, I'm curious about how to grow the split pool in size. Scenario, mirrored pool comprising of two disks, one 200GB and the other 300GB, naturally the size of the mirrored pool is 200GB e.g. the smaller of the two devices. I ran some tests within vbox env and I'm curious why after a zpool split one of the pools does not increase in size to 300gb, yet for some reason both pools remain at 200gb even if I export/import them. Sizes are reported via zpool list. I checked the label, both disks have a single EFI partition consuming 100% of each disk. and format/partition shows slice 0 on both disks also consuming the entire disk respectively. So how does one force the pool with the larger disk to increase in size ? cheers Matt On 03/30/12 12:55 AM, Daniel Carosone wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 05:54:47PM +0200, casper@oracle.com wrote: Is it possible to access the data from a detached device from an mirrored pool. If it is detached, I don't think there is a way to get access to the mirror. Had you used split, you should be able to reimport it. (You can try aiming zpool import at the disk but I'm not hopeful) The uberblocks have been invalidated as a precaution, so no. If it's too late to use split instead of detach, see this thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.solaris.opensolaris.zfs/15796/focus=15929 I renew my request for someone to adopt and nurture this tool. -- Dan. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Accessing Data from a detached device.
Casper, Yep that's the lad, I set it to on and split pool expands.. thanks Matt On 03/30/12 02:15 PM, casper@oracle.com wrote: Hi, As an addendum to this, I'm curious about how to grow the split pool in size. Scenario, mirrored pool comprising of two disks, one 200GB and the other 300GB, naturally the size of the mirrored pool is 200GB e.g. the smaller of the two devices. I ran some tests within vbox env and I'm curious why after a zpool split one of the pools does not increase in size to 300gb, yet for some reason both pools remain at 200gb even if I export/import them. Sizes are reported via zpool list. I checked the label, both disks have a single EFI partition consuming 100% of each disk. and format/partition shows slice 0 on both disks also consuming the entire disk respectively. So how does one force the pool with the larger disk to increase in size ? What is the autoexpand setting (I think it is off by default)? zpool get autoexpand splitted-pool Casper ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] Accessing Data from a detached device.
Hi, Is it possible to access the data from a detached device from an mirrored pool. Given a two device mirrored pool, if you zpool detach one device. Can the data on the removed device be accessed in some means. From what I can see you can attach the device back to the original pool, but this will simply re-silver everything from the already attached device back onto this device. If I attached this device to a different pool it will simply get overwritten. Any ideas ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Accessing Data from a detached device.
Cindy/Casper, Thanks for the pointer, luckily I'd not done the detach before sending the email, split seems the way to go. thanks again Matt On 03/29/12 05:13 PM, Cindy Swearingen wrote: Hi Matt, There is no easy way to access data from a detached device. You could try to force import it on another system or under a different name on the same system with the remaining device. The easiest way is to split the mirrored pool. See the steps below. Thanks, Cindy # zpool status pool pool: pool state: ONLINE scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Mar 28 15:58:44 2012 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM pool ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t2014C3F04F4Fd0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t2014C3F04F38d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors # zpool split pool pool2 # zpool import pool2 # zpool status pool pool2 pool: pool state: ONLINE scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Mar 28 15:58:44 2012 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM pool ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t2014C3F04F4Fd0 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors pool: pool2 state: ONLINE scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Mar 28 15:58:44 2012 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM pool2ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t2014C3F04F38d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors # On 03/29/12 09:50, Matt Keenan wrote: Hi, Is it possible to access the data from a detached device from an mirrored pool. Given a two device mirrored pool, if you zpool detach one device. Can the data on the removed device be accessed in some means. From what I can see you can attach the device back to the original pool, but this will simply re-silver everything from the already attached device back onto this device. If I attached this device to a different pool it will simply get overwritten. Any ideas ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Ensure Newly created pool is imported automatically in new BE
Dan, Tried export data after beadm umount, but on reboot zpool data is simply not imported at all... So exporting data before reboot dosen;t appear to help.. thanks Matt On 06/01/11 01:35, Daniel Carosone wrote: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 05:32:47PM +0100, Matt Keenan wrote: Jim, Thanks for the response, I've nearly got it working, coming up against a hostid issue. Here's the steps I'm going through : - At end of auto-install, on the client just installed before I manually reboot I do the following : $ beadm mount solaris /a $ zpool export data $ zpool import -R /a -N -o cachefile=/a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache data $ beadm umount solaris $ reboot - Before rebooting I check /a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache and it does contain references to data. - On reboot, the automatic import of data is attempted however following message is displayed : WARNING: pool 'data' could not be loaded as it was last accessed by another system (host: ai-client hostid: 0x87a4a4). See http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-EY. - Host id on booted client is : $ hostid 000c32eb As I don't control the import command on boot i cannot simply add a -f to force the import, any ideas on what else I can do here ? Can you simply export the pool again before rebooting, but after the cachefile in /a has been unmounted? -- Dan. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Ensure Newly created pool is imported automatically in new BE
Jim, Thanks for the response, I've nearly got it working, coming up against a hostid issue. Here's the steps I'm going through : - At end of auto-install, on the client just installed before I manually reboot I do the following : $ beadm mount solaris /a $ zpool export data $ zpool import -R /a -N -o cachefile=/a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache data $ beadm umount solaris $ reboot - Before rebooting I check /a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache and it does contain references to data. - On reboot, the automatic import of data is attempted however following message is displayed : WARNING: pool 'data' could not be loaded as it was last accessed by another system (host: ai-client hostid: 0x87a4a4). See http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-EY. - Host id on booted client is : $ hostid 000c32eb As I don't control the import command on boot i cannot simply add a -f to force the import, any ideas on what else I can do here ? cheers Matt On 05/27/11 13:43, Jim Klimov wrote: Did you try it as a single command, somewhat like: zpool create -R /a -o cachefile=/a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache mypool c3d0 Using altroots and cachefile(=none) explicitly is a nearly-documented way to avoid caching pools which you would not want to see after reboot, i.e. removable media. I think that after the AI is done and before reboot you might want to reset the altroot property to point to root (or be undefined) so that the data pool is mounted into your new rpools hierarchy and not under /a/mypool again ;) And if your AI setup does not use the data pool, you might be better off not using altroot at all, maybe... - Original Message - From: Matt Keenan matt...@opensolaris.org Date: Friday, May 27, 2011 13:25 Subject: [zfs-discuss] Ensure Newly created pool is imported automatically in new BE To: zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org Hi, Trying to ensure a newly created data pool gets import on boot into a new BE. Scenario : Just completed a AI install, and on the client before I reboot I want to create a data pool, and have this pool automatically imported on boot into the newly installed AI Boot Env. Trying to use the -R altroot option to zpool create to achieve this or the zpool set -o cachefile property, but having no luck, and would like some advice on what the best means of achieving this would be. When the install completes, we have a default root pool rpool, which contains a single default boot environment, rpool/ROOT/solaris This is mounted on /a so I tried : zpool create -R /a mypool c3d0 Also tried : zpool create mypool c3d0 zpool set -o cachefile=/a mypool I can clearly see /a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache contains information for rpool, but it does not get any information about mypool. I would expect this file to contain some reference to mypool. So I tried : zpool set -o cachefile=/a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache Which fails. Any advice would be great. cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss -- ++ || | Климов Евгений, Jim Klimov | | технический директор CTO | | ЗАО ЦОС и ВТ JSC COSHT | || | +7-903-7705859 (cellular) mailto:jimkli...@cos.ru | |CC:ad...@cos.ru,jimkli...@gmail.com | ++ | () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail | | /\- against microsoft attachments | ++ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] Ensure Newly created pool is imported automatically in new BE
Hi, Trying to ensure a newly created data pool gets import on boot into a new BE. Scenario : Just completed a AI install, and on the client before I reboot I want to create a data pool, and have this pool automatically imported on boot into the newly installed AI Boot Env. Trying to use the -R altroot option to zpool create to achieve this or the zpool set -o cachefile property, but having no luck, and would like some advice on what the best means of achieving this would be. When the install completes, we have a default root pool rpool, which contains a single default boot environment, rpool/ROOT/solaris This is mounted on /a so I tried : zpool create -R /a mypool c3d0 Also tried : zpool create mypool c3d0 zpool set -o cachefile=/a mypool I can clearly see /a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache contains information for rpool, but it does not get any information about mypool. I would expect this file to contain some reference to mypool. So I tried : zpool set -o cachefile=/a/etc/zfs/zpool.cache Which fails. Any advice would be great. cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] ZPOOL_CONFIG_IS_HOLE
Hi, Can someone shed some light on what this ZPOOL_CONFIG is exactly. At a guess is it a bad sector of the disk, non writable and thus ZFS marks it as a hole ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] root pool mirror problems
As queried by Ian, the new disk being attached must be at least as big as the original root pool disk. It can be bigger, but the difference will not be used in the mirroring. cheers Matt On 05/20/10 10:11 AM, Ian Collins wrote: On 05/20/10 08:39 PM, roi shidlovsky wrote: hi. i am trying to attach a mirror disk to my root pool. if the two disk are the same size.. it all works fine, but if the two disks are with different size (8GB and 7.5GB) i get a I/O error on the attach command. can anybody tell me what am i doing wrong? Trying to mirror a larger disk with a smaller one? Recent builds can cope with a small difference to allow for variations between models of the same nominal size, but not 500MB. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Mirroring USB Drive with Laptop for Backup purposes
On 05/ 7/10 10:07 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote: On 05/07/2010 11:08 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: I'm going to continue encouraging you to staying mainstream, because what people do the most is usually what's supported the best. If I may be the contrarian, I hope Matt keeps experimenting with this, files bugs, and they get fixed. His use case is very compelling - I know lots of SOHO folks who could really use a NAS where this 'just worked' The ZFS team has done well by thinking liberally about conventional assumptions. -Bill My plan indeed is to continue with this setup (going to upgrade to 138 to resolve my reboot issue). This particular use case for me is definitely compelling, the simply fact that I can plug my USB drive into another laptop and boot into the exact same environment is reason enough for me to continue with this setup and see how things go. Mind you doing occasional zfs send's to another backup drive might be something I'll do aswell :-) cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Mirroring USB Drive with Laptop for Backup purposes
After some playing around I've noticed some kinks particularly around booting. Some scenarios : - Poweroff with USB drive connected or removed, Solaris will not boot unless USB drive is connected, and in some cases need to be attached to the exact same USB port when last attached. Is this a bug ? - Take USB drive offline via zfs offline, and poweroff, this is much nastier, as machine would not boot at all regardless of whether USB drive was connected or not. I had to boot into LiveCD, zpool import (whilst USB was attached), and bring USB drive back online via zfs online pool disk. Exact steps on what I did : http://blogs.sun.com/mattman/entry/bootable_usb_mirror As I find other caveats I'll add them... But it looks like having the drive connected at all times is preferable. cheers Matt On 05/ 6/10 12:11 PM, Matt Keenan wrote: Based on comments, some people say nay, some say yah. so I decided to give it a spin, and see how I get on. To make my mirror bootable I followed instructions posted here : http://www.taiter.com/blog/2009/04/opensolaris-200811-adding-disk.html I plan to do a quick write up myself of my own experience, but so far everything is working fine. Mirror size is 200GB (Smallest disk, happens to be laptop disk), once I attached the USB drive, it started resilvering straight away, and only took 1hr 45mins to complete and it resilvered 120G !! This I was very impressed with. So far I've not noticed any system performance degradation with the drive attached. I did a quick test, yanked out the drive, degrades rpool as expected, but system continues to function fine. I also did a quick test to see of the USB drive was indeed bootable, by connecting to another laptop, it booted perfectly. Connecting the USB drive back to original laptop, the pool comes back online and resilvers seamlessly. This is automatic 24/7 backup at it's best... One thing I did notice, I powered down yesterday whilst USB was attached, this morning when booting up, I did so without the USB attached, laptop failed to boot, I had to connect the USB drive and it booted up fine. Key would be to degrade the pool before shutdown, e.g. disconnect USB drive, might try using zpool offline and see how that works. If I encounter issues, I'll post again. cheers Matt On 05/ 5/10 09:34 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Matt Keenan Just wondering whether mirroring a USB drive with main laptop disk for backup purposes is recommended or not. Plan would be to connect the USB drive, once or twice a week, let it resilver, and then disconnect again. Connecting USB drive 24/7 would AFAIK have performance issues for the Laptop. MMmmm... If it works, sounds good. But I don't think it'll work as expected, for a number of reasons, outlined below. The suggestion I would have instead, would be to make the external drive its own separate zpool, and then you can incrementally zfs send | zfs receive onto the external. Here are the obstacles I think you'll have with your proposed solution: #1 I think all the entire used portion of the filesystem needs to resilver every time. I don't think there's any such thing as an incremental resilver. #2 How would you plan to disconnect the drive? If you zpool detach it, I think it's no longer a mirror, and not mountable. If you simply yank out the plug ... although that might work, it would certainly be nonideal. If you power off, disconnect, and power on ... Again, it should probably be fine, but it's not designed to be used that way intentionally, so your results ... are probably as-yet untested. I don't want to go on. This list could go on forever. I will strongly encourage you to simply use zfs send | zfs receive because that's a standard practice thing to do. It is known that the external drive is not bootable this way, but that's why you have this article on how to make it bootable: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5461/ghzur?l=ena=view This would have the added benefit of the USB drive being bootable. By default, AFAIK, that's not correct. When you mirror rpool to another device, by default the 2nd device is not bootable, because it's just got an rpool in there. No boot loader. Even if you do this mirror idea, which I believe will be slower and less reliable than zfs send | zfs receive you still haven't gained anything as compared to the zfs send | zfs receive procedure, which is known to work reliable with optimal performance. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] Mirroring USB Drive with Laptop for Backup purposes
Based on comments, some people say nay, some say yah. so I decided to give it a spin, and see how I get on. To make my mirror bootable I followed instructions posted here : http://www.taiter.com/blog/2009/04/opensolaris-200811-adding-disk.html I plan to do a quick write up myself of my own experience, but so far everything is working fine. Mirror size is 200GB (Smallest disk, happens to be laptop disk), once I attached the USB drive, it started resilvering straight away, and only took 1hr 45mins to complete and it resilvered 120G !! This I was very impressed with. So far I've not noticed any system performance degradation with the drive attached. I did a quick test, yanked out the drive, degrades rpool as expected, but system continues to function fine. I also did a quick test to see of the USB drive was indeed bootable, by connecting to another laptop, it booted perfectly. Connecting the USB drive back to original laptop, the pool comes back online and resilvers seamlessly. This is automatic 24/7 backup at it's best... One thing I did notice, I powered down yesterday whilst USB was attached, this morning when booting up, I did so without the USB attached, laptop failed to boot, I had to connect the USB drive and it booted up fine. Key would be to degrade the pool before shutdown, e.g. disconnect USB drive, might try using zpool offline and see how that works. If I encounter issues, I'll post again. cheers Matt On 05/ 5/10 09:34 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Matt Keenan Just wondering whether mirroring a USB drive with main laptop disk for backup purposes is recommended or not. Plan would be to connect the USB drive, once or twice a week, let it resilver, and then disconnect again. Connecting USB drive 24/7 would AFAIK have performance issues for the Laptop. MMmmm... If it works, sounds good. But I don't think it'll work as expected, for a number of reasons, outlined below. The suggestion I would have instead, would be to make the external drive its own separate zpool, and then you can incrementally zfs send | zfs receive onto the external. Here are the obstacles I think you'll have with your proposed solution: #1 I think all the entire used portion of the filesystem needs to resilver every time. I don't think there's any such thing as an incremental resilver. #2 How would you plan to disconnect the drive? If you zpool detach it, I think it's no longer a mirror, and not mountable. If you simply yank out the plug ... although that might work, it would certainly be nonideal. If you power off, disconnect, and power on ... Again, it should probably be fine, but it's not designed to be used that way intentionally, so your results ... are probably as-yet untested. I don't want to go on. This list could go on forever. I will strongly encourage you to simply use zfs send | zfs receive because that's a standard practice thing to do. It is known that the external drive is not bootable this way, but that's why you have this article on how to make it bootable: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5461/ghzur?l=ena=view This would have the added benefit of the USB drive being bootable. By default, AFAIK, that's not correct. When you mirror rpool to another device, by default the 2nd device is not bootable, because it's just got an rpool in there. No boot loader. Even if you do this mirror idea, which I believe will be slower and less reliable than zfs send | zfs receive you still haven't gained anything as compared to the zfs send | zfs receive procedure, which is known to work reliable with optimal performance. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] Mirroring USB Drive with Laptop for Backup purposes
Hi, Just wondering whether mirroring a USB drive with main laptop disk for backup purposes is recommended or not. Current setup, single root pool set up on 200GB internal laptop drive : $ zpool status pool: rpool state: ONLINE scrub: non requested config : NAMESTATE READ WRITE CKSUM rpool ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t0d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0 I have a 320GB external USB drive which I'd like to configure as a mirror of this root pool (I know it will only use 200GB of the eternal one, not worried about that). Plan would be to connect the USB drive, once or twice a week, let it resilver, and then disconnect again. Connecting USB drive 24/7 would AFAIK have performance issues for the Laptop. This would have the added benefit of the USB drive being bootable. - Recommended or not ? - Are there known issues with this type of setup ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] swap across multiple pools
The default install for OpenSolaris creates a single root pool, and creates a swap and dump dataset within this pool. In a mutipool environment, would be make sense to add swap to a pool outside or the root pool, either as the sole swap dataset to be used or as extra swap ? Would this have any performance implications ? cheers Matt ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
