Need Help with a Raid 1 Time critical issue.

Wed Feb 8 02:33:05 UTC 2012

To whom it may concern:

I have been using the following instructions, I am unable to maintain a
Raid1 installation. I have sent this to the Bug group and programming group
( docs/164620 <http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=164620&cat=docs> :
Raid 1 issues) and was told to contact your groups. During the initial setup
the Raid appears to be there. But when I reboot, the system stops, and will
not totally reboot. One issue is my fstab file, using basis install, does
not look anything like the file listed below. I really need to get this
going my time is getting short and I am in trouble on this box.  On reboot,
it destroys the Raid that it indicated was present, before the reboot.  I
have listed my equipment below and have pasted a copy of the instructions I
use to the letter.

Your help would be greatly appreciated, as I have a time limit on this box
and the clock is ticking.  This unit must be working with all software
before Feb. 28.

Thanks

Morris Allen (Moe)

Environment

Intel DQ 57Tm Motherboard Intel Processor I5 650 8gb Kingston mem 2- 1TB
Sata 3 Hard Drives Unable to install Raid1

Description

Using the following instructions, I am unable to maintain a Raid1
installation. I have sent this to the programming group ( docs/164620
<http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=164620&cat=docs> : Raid 1
issues) and was told to contact document group. During the initial setup the
Raid appears to be there. But when I reboot, the system stops, and will not
totally reboot. One issue is my fstab file, using basis install, does not
look anything like the file listed below. I really need to get this going my
time is getting short and I am in trouble on this box.

This is the setup that I am trying to use.

# sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=17

Now create the mirror. Begin the process by storing meta-data information on
the primary disk device, effectively creating the /dev/mirror/gm device
using the following command:

Warning: Creating a mirror out of the boot drive may result in data loss if
any data has been stored on the last sector of the disk. This risk is
reduced if creating the mirror is done promptly after a fresh install of
FreeBSD. The following procedure is also incompatible with the default
installation settings of FreeBSD 9.X which use the new GPT partition scheme.
GEOM will overwrite GPT metadata, causing data loss and possibly an
unbootable system.
# gmirror label -vb round-robin gm0 /dev/da0

The system should respond with:
Metadata value stored on /dev/da0.
Done.

Initialize GEOM, this will load the /boot/kernel/geom_mirror.ko kernel
module:
# gmirror load

Note: When this command completes successfully, it creates the gm0 device
node under the /dev/mirror directory.

Enable loading of the geom_mirror.ko kernel module during system
initialization:
# echo 'geom_mirror_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf

Edit the /etc/fstab file, replacing references to the old da0 with the new
device nodes of the gm0 mirror device.

Note: If vi(1) is your preferred editor, the following is an easy way to
accomplish this task:
# vi /etc/fstab

In vi(1) back up the current contents of fstab by typing :w /etc/fstab.bak.
Then replace all old da0 references with gm0 by typing :%s/da/mirror\/gm/g.

The resulting fstab file should look similar to the following. It does not
matter if the disk drives are SCSI or ATA, the RAID device will be gm
regardless.
# Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass#
/dev/mirror/gm0s1b none swap sw 0 0
/dev/mirror/gm0s1a / ufs rw 1 1
/dev/mirror/gm0s1d /usr ufs rw 0 0
/dev/mirror/gm0s1f /home ufs rw 2 2
#/dev/mirror/gm0s2d /store ufs rw 2 2
/dev/mirror/gm0s1e /var ufs rw 2 2
/dev/acd0 /cdrom cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0

Reboot the system:
# shutdown -r now

How-To-Repeat

This is a clean install each time and I have the same results everytime I
try to install the Raid1. No change.. this is the x64 BSD V9

Morris Allen (Moe)

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