[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI rpool on USB flash in N40L?

[Reginald Beardsley]

Andy,

Thanks.  I'll be interested to find what your experience is.

As it happens, I just ordered 3x2 TB a few seconds ago and will go w/ mirrored rpool in a small partition on each drive.  I'm trying to get back to doing science rather than admin. Jim Klimov's post and link to comments at Illumos were enough to make the decision for me.

Thanks again for your help. Your advice on the N40L was spot on.  I'm really happy w/ it.  I'd been looking for something like it for sometime, but very nervous about adding to my shelfware collection.

Have Fun!
Reg

--- On Sun, 1/27/13, andy thomas <andy at time-domain.co.uk> wrote:

> From: andy thomas <andy at time-domain.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] OI rpool on  USB flash in N40L?

> I found some USB drives were slower than others and some (eg
> a Verbatim black "pinstripe" USB stick, for example) would
> not accept a UFS filesystem at all. I'm now using Intenso
> Rainbow Blue 4 GB flash drives on all my FreeBSD 9.0
> installs on N40L servers.
> 
> USB drives used as system disks will be slow unless you put
> the /tmp and /var filesystems on memory filesystems (MFS).
> Here's what I do on my FBSD servers:
> 
>     1. boot system up normally (with or
> without the ZFS pool
>        on the mechanical hard
> disks, it doesn't matter)
> 
>     2. tar up the existing /var and /tmp
> filesystems and save them
>        somewhere on the USB
> filesystem, eg in /md_backups
> 
>     3. disable the automatic start-up of
> syslogd and devd daemons
>        by editing
> /etc/defaults/rc.conf and making sure it has the
>        following lines in it:
> 
>         devd_enable="NO"
> 
>         and
> 
>         syslogd_enable="NO"
> 
>     4. now add this to the /etc/rc.local
> script:
> 
>         # Create memory
> filesystems
> 
>         cd /
>         mdmfs -s 500m md0
> /tmp
>         tar xzpf
> /md_backups/tmp.tgz
>         mdmfs -s 500m md1
> /var
>         tar xzpf
> /md_backups/var.tgz
> 
>         # Start syslogd and
> devd daemons
> 
>         /etc/rc.d/syslogd
> onestart
>         /etc/rc.d/devd
> onestart
> 
>         echo '.'
>         exit 0
> 
>     (this creates two 500 MB memory
> filesystems /dev/md0 and /dev/md1
>      and mounts them on /var and
> /tmp and unpacks the preserved /var
>      and /tmp filesystems frm the
> tar.gz backups and then starts the
>      devd and syslod daemons.
> 
>     5. next, to preserve the state of /var
> and /tmp across reboots
>        add this to your
> /etc/rc.shutdown.local script (you might need
>        to create this if it
> doesn't exist):
> 
>         # Insert other
> shutdown procedures here
> 
>         tar czf
> /md_backups/var.tgz /var
>         tar czf
> /md_backups/tmp.tgz /tmp
> 
>         echo '.'
>         exit 0
> 
>     6. finally, use the 'noatime' parameter
> in your /etc/fstab to
>        prevent commiands like
> ls, etc from continually re-reading the
>        contents of / - my
> /etc/fstab looks like this:
> 
>         # Device   
>     Mountpoint      FStype 
> Options Dump    Pass#
>         /dev/da0p2 
>     /           
>    ufs 
>    rw,noatime      1 
>      1
>         /dev/da0p3 
>     /var           
> ufs     rw      2 
>      2
>         /dev/da0p4 
>     /tmp           
> ufs     rw      2 
>      2
> 
> This works a treat - the MFS is really fast and you wouldn't
> know the system disk was a USB drive.
> 
> By the way, I'm buying some new N36Ls cheap for my own use
> so will have a crack at getting OI 151a running on a USB
> drive.
> 
> cheers, Andy
> 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > OpenIndiana-discuss at openindiana.org
> > http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
> > 
> 
> 
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