Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Tabriz Leman wrote: Torrey McMahon wrote: Lori Alt wrote: No, zfs boot will be supported on both x86 and sparc. Sparc's OBP, and various x86 BIOS's both have restrictions on the devices that can be accessed at boot time, so we need to limit the devices in a root pool on both architectures. Hi Lori. Can you expand a bit on the above? What sort of limitations are you referring too? (Boot time? Topology?) I think what Lori is referring to here is that we need to limit the rootpool to BIOS/OBP visible devices; not all devices are visible from the BIOS/OBP (fibre channel devices, for example). Actually, OBP and BIOS should have access to fabric devices. I know OBP does and I've seen docs that mention BIOS does. (Look in the x86 fabric boot docs for example) I think the problem is more around, as Lori mentioned in her email, the ability to traverse a ZFS pool when the ZFS drivers haven't been loaded. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Dick Davies wrote: On 17/08/06, Lori Alt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dick Davies wrote: That's excellent news Lori, thanks to everyone who's working on this. Are you planning to use a single pool, or an 'os pool/application pool' split? Thus I think of the most important split as the os pool/data pool split. Maybe that's what you meant. That's it, yes :) I should probably have said service rather than application. .. limitations in the boot PROMs cause us to place restrictions on the devices you can place in a root pool. (root mirroring WILL be supported, however). Does boot prom support mean this will be SPARC only? That's interesting (last time I tried Tabriz' hack, it was x86 only). No, zfs boot will be supported on both x86 and sparc. Sparc's OBP, and various x86 BIOS's both have restrictions on the devices that can be accessed at boot time, so we need to limit the devices in a root pool on both architectures. Or is x86 zfs root going to need a grub /boot partition on one of the disks? On x86, each disk capable of booting the system (which means each disk in a root pool) will have grub installed on it in a disk slice which occupies the first few blocks of the disk. It's not the same as the old /boot partition, because all the slice contains is grub. It doesn't contain a file system. Lori ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
On 18/08/06, Lori Alt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, zfs boot will be supported on both x86 and sparc. Sparc's OBP, and various x86 BIOS's both have restrictions on the devices that can be accessed at boot time, so we need to limit the devices in a root pool on both architectures. Gotcha. I wasn't sure if you were proposing requiring a custom BIOS on x86, but I take it (from your next point) you're just chainloading a ZFS-aware grub Or is x86 zfs root going to need a grub /boot partition on one of the disks? On x86, each disk capable of booting the system (which means each disk in a root pool) will have grub installed on it in a disk slice which occupies the first few blocks of the disk. It's not the same as the old /boot partition, because all the slice contains is grub. It doesn't contain a file system. I think that was really what I was getting at. So long as one of the disks is still alive, and the BIOS can boot of it, then you'd be alright? That sounds perfect - the implementation is really not that important to me, so long as there's no single point of failure. Thanks for your time, and have a good weekend. -- Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns http://number9.hellooperator.net/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Lori Alt wrote: No, zfs boot will be supported on both x86 and sparc. Sparc's OBP, and various x86 BIOS's both have restrictions on the devices that can be accessed at boot time, so we need to limit the devices in a root pool on both architectures. Hi Lori. Can you expand a bit on the above? What sort of limitations are you referring too? (Boot time? Topology?) ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Torrey McMahon wrote: Lori Alt wrote: No, zfs boot will be supported on both x86 and sparc. Sparc's OBP, and various x86 BIOS's both have restrictions on the devices that can be accessed at boot time, so we need to limit the devices in a root pool on both architectures. Hi Lori. Can you expand a bit on the above? What sort of limitations are you referring too? (Boot time? Topology?) The limitation is mainly about the *number* of disks that can be accessed at one time. If we were going to support booting off a set of disks in a RAID-Z configuration, the early boot code would have to read some blocks from one disk, and then some blocks from another disk, and so on. There are difficulties doing that when using the capabilities of OBP or the BIOS to do I/O. (and if you want me to be more specific about what THOSE difficulties are, I'd have to get someone who knows more about BIOS and OBP to answer the question.) But with straight mirroring, there's no such problem because any disk in the mirror can supply all of the disk blocks needed to boot. lori ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Torrey McMahon wrote: Lori Alt wrote: No, zfs boot will be supported on both x86 and sparc. Sparc's OBP, and various x86 BIOS's both have restrictions on the devices that can be accessed at boot time, so we need to limit the devices in a root pool on both architectures. Hi Lori. Can you expand a bit on the above? What sort of limitations are you referring too? (Boot time? Topology?) I think what Lori is referring to here is that we need to limit the rootpool to BIOS/OBP visible devices; not all devices are visible from the BIOS/OBP (fibre channel devices, for example). Tabriz ___ 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] ZFS Boot Disk
Lori said: The limitation is mainly about the *number* of disks that can be accessed at one time. ... But with straight mirroring, there's no such problem because any disk in the mirror can supply all of the disk blocks needed to boot. Does that mean that these restrictions will go away once replication can be varied on a per dataset (or per file) basis? You could have all your 'essential to boot' files mirrored across all disks, then raidz2 the rest... Steve. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Dick Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As an aside, is there a general method to generate bootable opensolaris DVDs? The only way I know of getting opensolaris on is installing sxcr and then BFUing on top. A year ago, I did publish a toolkit to create bootable SchilliX CDs/DVDs. Would this help? Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 02:26:24PM -0600, Lori Alt wrote: What about Express? Probably not any time soon. If it makes U4, I think that would make it available in Express late this year. Is there a specific Nevada build you are going to target? I'd love to start testing this as soon as possible. I have both SPARC and x86 here to play with. That being said, I'm (hopefuly safely) assuming that if this makes it into Update 4 it will include support for zfs-root/install on SPARC as well as x86? We expect to release SPARC support at the same time as x86. Most excellent. -brian ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Brian Hechinger wrote: On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 02:26:24PM -0600, Lori Alt wrote: What about Express? Probably not any time soon. If it makes U4, I think that would make it available in Express late this year. Is there a specific Nevada build you are going to target? I'd love to start testing this as soon as possible. I have both SPARC and x86 here to play with. You need more than a Nevada build. You also need the installation code. We're working on an OpenSolaris community web page for zfs-boot. On that web page will be links to files that can be downloaded for putting together a netinstall image or a DVD for installing a system with a zfs root file system. We hope to have that available in the next few weeks. lori That being said, I'm (hopefuly safely) assuming that if this makes it into Update 4 it will include support for zfs-root/install on SPARC as well as x86? We expect to release SPARC support at the same time as x86. Most excellent. -brian ___ 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] ZFS Boot Disk
Brian Hechinger wrote: On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 07:25:55PM -0700, Matthew Ahrens wrote: On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 08:17:03PM -0500, Malahat Qureshi wrote: Is there any way to boot of from zfs disk work around ?? Yes, see http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=are_you_ready_to_rumble I followed those directions with snv_38 and was unsucessful, I wonder what I did wrong. Sadly it's my work desktop and I had to stop screwing around with that and actually get work done. :) I think I'll just wait until you can install directly to ZFS. Any ETA on that, btw? While the official release of zfs-boot won't be out until Update 4 at least, we're working right now on getting enough pieces available through OpenSolaris so that users can put together a boot CD/DVD/image that will directly install a system with a zfs root. I can't give an exact date, but we're pretty close. I expect it within weeks, not months. Lori ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 09:47:48AM -0600, Lori Alt wrote: While the official release of zfs-boot won't be out until Update 4 at least, we're working right now on getting enough pieces available through OpenSolaris so that users can put together a boot CD/DVD/image that will directly install a system with a zfs root. I can't give an exact date, but we're pretty close. I expect it within weeks, not months. That's great Lori!! I could wait months, but I'd rather wait weeks. :) What about Express? I don't have a problem running express. In fact, the desktop at work (a Dell POS) has snv_38 on it and the work laptop (a Dell POS, see a patern here? *G*) has snv_40 on it. ;) That being said, I'm (hopefuly safely) assuming that if this makes it into Update 4 it will include support for zfs-root/install on SPARC as well as x86? That would make my U80 at home very, very happy. :) -brian ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
Brian Hechinger wrote: On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 09:47:48AM -0600, Lori Alt wrote: While the official release of zfs-boot won't be out until Update 4 at least, we're working right now on getting enough pieces available through OpenSolaris so that users can put together a boot CD/DVD/image that will directly install a system with a zfs root. I can't give an exact date, but we're pretty close. I expect it within weeks, not months. That's great Lori!! I could wait months, but I'd rather wait weeks. :) What about Express? Probably not any time soon. If it makes U4, I think that would make it available in Express late this year. That being said, I'm (hopefuly safely) assuming that if this makes it into Update 4 it will include support for zfs-root/install on SPARC as well as x86? We expect to release SPARC support at the same time as x86. Lori ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot Disk
On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 08:17:03PM -0500, Malahat Qureshi wrote: Is there any way to boot of from zfs disk work around ?? Yes, see http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=are_you_ready_to_rumble --mat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
