Learning Vinum

[Adrian Wontroba]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 10:07:39AM +0100, Henrik Morsing wrote:
 
> Sorry, I think I've accidentally reply to the sender address on some of my
> posts.

You did (8-)

> On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Adrian Wontroba wrote:
<about using newfs -v option)

> Thats odd, the method I've used is both in the Handbook and in Greg
> Leheys' "The
> Complete FreeBSD".

The (rel 4-stable of a month ago) man page says you need newfs -v.
A CVS version of the handbook indicates that it is not needed for
releases after 5.0.

> Just to make sure I won't erase anything: When you say 'disk' do you
> mean slice, disklabel or something else?

I was quoting from the newfs man page.

In your case you have created a slice (DOS / fdisk partition), then
used disklabel to define a vinum partition, have updated your vinum
configuration to define a volume occupying that space, and are now
trying to create a filesystem there.

Does a vinum list command look OK - drive and volume up, with the
expected amount of space?  If not, it is probably vinum resetconfig
time.

As for loss of data - yes, it is possible.  All of the low
level disk and filestore tools are sharp edged, and will
do what you tell them to do.  If in any doubt study the
online handbook, man pages, the formatting media article (
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/formatting-media/ )
until you understand.  And then be careful.  Backups are not a bad idea
either.

In general, overlapping partitions are a remarkably bad thing, other
than the technique given at the end of the handbook for making your root
partition resilient.

Placing a partition too close to the start of a slice so that it gets
clobbered when you rewrite the boot blocks (months later) isn't too
good an idea either.  I was really relieved when I discovered that grog
writes the configuration information twice and the copy was intact,
alowing me to retrieve my configuration and data.

-- 
Adrian