Gmirror with PC BSD 9

[django]

Dear PC BSD people,
yesterday I tried PC BSD for the first time (a happy freebsd server and linux desktop user) and was really suprised by what I saw. A beautiful and functional desktop with minimal ram requirements. I did see a few quirks (like sound playing way too fast so voices sound weird on flash videos) but have not seen anything that is considered a showstopper.

However,
as I'm planning to install PC BSD 9 on my primary desktop, I wanted to know if I could use the same procedure outlined below to setup raid:

http://onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2005/11/...cs.html?page=1

Brgds
Django

[kmoore134]

It should be easier than that in PC-BSD. During the install you go
advanced, and setup your disk, you then add a new partition, select
mirror, and tie the disk2 to mirror disk1, it should handle the setup
for you.

BTW, if the sound was playing too fast, was it in a VM? That's the only
place I've seen that happen.

[django]

Wow,
will that do the trick and create a gmirror array just like that? I will try to do as you adviced in the weekend and report if I have success.

Indeed the sound playing too fast occured in the virtualbox image I downloaded from the pc bsd site.

[django]

I installed pc-bsd 9 and proceeded as you seggested, by adding a new partition, selecting mirror and the round-robin algorithm. The installation proceeded without a hickup but I'm not sure the mirror got installed. How do I diagnose my mirror?

Take a look at my fstab:

cat /etc/fstab
# Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass
/dev/label/rootfs0 / ufs rw,noatime 1 1
/dev/label/swap0 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/label/var0 /var ufs rw,noatime 1 1
/dev/label/usr0 /usr ufs rw,noatime 1 1
procfs /proc procfs rw 0 0
linprocfs /compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0


And #gmirror status gives no output.

So how do I know if the installation created the mirror successfully?

[kmoore134]

If gmirror status is empty, I'm not sure it got setup. Did you leave it
on the "advanced' disk screen, or switch back to the basic mode before
installing?

[django]

I switched back to the basic mode before installing. Do you think that has something to do with it (the installer does not preserve settings in this way)?
What would you suggest I do now, reinstall?

[kmoore134]

Yes, if you are on the "basic" screen, its going to use the basic
options, likewise with "Advanced" screen. You'll need to reload to setup
gmirror, or do some manual kung-fu to switch your existing partitions to
a gmirror.