RAIDFrame RAID 1 on OpenBSD 3.3

From: ydexter <ydexter(at)yahoo.com>
Date: Fri Sep 19 2003 - 09:03:34 EDT

I installed a few times OpenBSD 3.3 . Now i want to use it on a server, togheter with a software RAID 1 and i choosed RAIDframe. I read ten times the raid and raictl manual's pages. I read also about RAID (technical paper present at RAIDframe web page). I think i have now a basic understanding of what RAID is. I found a few articles about installing RAID in OpenBSD.

With all these, i still don't understand how to set up RAIDFrame. Ok, you could say 'live with it'. I don't want to do that, because i think i am very close, but without some extra docs i can't solve this, so that's why i came here, on this forum.
I found just 2 papers about RAIDframe install on the web, but if here are no familiar people with this subject i will declare it 'strict secret'.

Now, i installed OpenBSD with recommanded partitions, using all space on my disk (disk0), like i saw in docs, using disklabel: a a /
a b swap

a d /tmp
a e /var
a g /usr
a h /home

I have another hardware identical disk and i want to mirror all partitions. I saw that there is a problem with booting from a FS_RAID partition so i will make another one of type 4.2BSD. I saw that it better to choose FS_RAID for partitions. Until now it is all clear.

Now, with the second disk (disk1), it is not clear in manual pages, what i have to do:
? make the same partitions on it
? using disklabel to write the disk0's partitons
? just let it like it is, unpartitioned

I want to make sets of raid, one for every partiton: wd0a - wd1a, wd0b - wd1b and so on, is it possible.
I saw i have to add raid0a, raid1b, what are these and do i have to increase the index number for every partition? what is the difference between raid0a and raid1a, different sets? Are these dome helpful dev, which i have to create ?

I want to install disk0 , labeled wd0 and then to use wd1 for a mirror after wd0's install, is ti possible, because i saw some tricks on the web to change some disks.

What kind of partitions are raid0x, because i don't know how to handle them (mount, copy) and also some wd0x are dissapearing after raid conversion or maybe they are still there ???

I will be very happy to have some complete example for crating 1 partition mirror, and what steps i have to repeat for the others. The docs keeps talking about labels, sets, components but they don't provide a clue about what are these notions. Also on openbsd.org there is no doc about RAID. Knowledge and my english don't permit me to write a docs, but if i will understand i will write a tutorial about this, for sure, because it;s a real pain to set up RAID.

Thank you very much. Received on Fri Sep 19 09:08:03 2003