"gmirror load" broken in 8.1 memstick

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:

> If you've been able to run 'gmirror label' then geom_mirror.ko is
> almost certainly already loaded into your kernel, making 'gmirror
> load' superfluous.  Check using kldstat(8).

Fixit# kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1    1 0xc0400000 bb5504   kernel

It looks as if writing the metadata doesn't require geom_mirror.ko
to be loaded -- which makes a certain amount of sense since the
module, even if loaded, presumably shouldn't do anything to a
partition that doesn't already have metadata in its last sector.

The good news is that, now having an idea what to look for, I checked
for geom_mirror.ko in /boot/kernel and found -- surprise! -- the
/boot/kernel directory doesn't even exist in the Fixit FS (when
booted from the USB stick, dunno about the CD or DVD) and this is
apparently the cause of "gmirror load" reporting "Command 'load' not
available."  The fix is:

Fixit# ln -s /dist/boot/kernel /boot

after which "gmirror load" works, creating /dev/mirror/gm0{,a,b}.