StorageSynopsisThis chapter covers the use of disks in FreeBSD. This
includes memory-backed disks, network-attached disks,
standard SCSI/IDE storage devices, and devices using the USB
interface.After reading this chapter, you will know:The terminology FreeBSD uses to describe the
organization of data on a physical disk (partitions and slices).How to add additional hard disks to your system.How to configure &os; to use USB storage devices.How to set up virtual file systems, such as memory
disks.How to use quotas to limit disk space usage.How to encrypt disks to secure them against attackers.How to create and burn CDs and DVDs on FreeBSD.The various storage media options for backups.How to use backup programs available under FreeBSD.How to backup to floppy disks.What snapshots are and how to use them efficiently.Before reading this chapter, you should:Know how to configure and install a new FreeBSD kernel
().Device NamesThe following is a list of physical storage devices
supported in FreeBSD, and the device names associated with
them.
Physical Disk Naming ConventionsDrive typeDrive device nameIDE hard drivesadIDE CDROM drivesacdSCSI hard drives and USB Mass storage devicesdaSCSI CDROM drivescdAssorted non-standard CDROM drivesmcd for Mitsumi CD-ROM,
scd for Sony CD-ROM,
matcd for Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM
The &man.matcd.4; driver has been removed
in FreeBSD 4.X branch since October 5th,
2002 and does not exist in FreeBSD 5.0 and
5.1 releases. However this driver is back in the
FreeBSD 5.X branch since June 16th,
2003.Floppy drivesfdSCSI tape drivessaIDE tape drivesastFlash drivesfla for &diskonchip; Flash deviceRAID drivesaacd for &adaptec; AdvancedRAID,
mlxd and mlyd
for &mylex;,
amrd for AMI &megaraid;,
idad for Compaq Smart RAID,
twed for &tm.3ware; RAID.
DavidO'BrienOriginally contributed by Adding DisksdisksaddingLets say we want to add a new SCSI disk to a machine that
currently only has a single drive. First turn off the computer
and install the drive in the computer following the instructions
of the computer, controller, and drive manufacturer. Due to the
wide variations of procedures to do this, the details are beyond
the scope of this document.Login as user root. After you have installed the
drive, inspect /var/run/dmesg.boot to ensure the new
disk was found. Continuing with our example, the newly added drive will
be da1 and we want to mount it on
/1 (if you are adding an IDE drive, the device name
will be wd1 in pre-4.0 systems, or
ad1 in most 4.X systems).partitionsslicesfdiskBecause FreeBSD runs on IBM-PC compatible computers, it must
take into account the PC BIOS partitions. These are different
from the traditional BSD partitions. A PC disk has up to four
BIOS partition entries. If the disk is going to be truly
dedicated to FreeBSD, you can use the
dedicated mode. Otherwise, FreeBSD will
have to live within one of the PC BIOS partitions. FreeBSD
calls the PC BIOS partitions slices so as
not to confuse them with traditional BSD partitions. You may
also use slices on a disk that is dedicated to FreeBSD, but used
in a computer that also has another operating system installed.
This is to not confuse the fdisk utility of
the other operating system.In the slice case the drive will be added as
/dev/da1s1e. This is read as: SCSI disk,
unit number 1 (second SCSI disk), slice 1 (PC BIOS partition 1),
and e BSD partition. In the dedicated
case, the drive will be added simply as
/dev/da1e.Using &man.sysinstall.8;sysinstalladding diskssuNavigating SysinstallYou may use /stand/sysinstall to
partition and label a new disk using its easy to use menus.
Either login as user root or use the
su command. Run
/stand/sysinstall and enter the
Configure menu. Within the
FreeBSD Configuration Menu, scroll down and
select the Fdisk option.fdisk Partition EditorOnce inside fdisk, we can type A to
use the entire disk for FreeBSD. When asked if you want to
remain cooperative with any future possible operating
systems, answer YES. Write the
changes to the disk using W. Now exit the
FDISK editor by typing q. Next you will be
asked about the Master Boot Record. Since you are adding a
disk to an already running system, choose
None.Disk Label EditorBSD partitionsNext, you need to exit sysinstall
and start it again. Follow the directions above, although this
time choose the Label option. This will
enter the Disk Label Editor. This
is where you will create the traditional BSD partitions. A
disk can have up to eight partitions, labeled
a-h.
A few of the partition labels have special uses. The
a partition is used for the root partition
(/). Thus only your system disk (e.g,
the disk you boot from) should have an a
partition. The b partition is used for
swap partitions, and you may have many disks with swap
partitions. The c partition addresses the
entire disk in dedicated mode, or the entire FreeBSD slice in
slice mode. The other partitions are for general use.sysinstall's Label editor
favors the e
partition for non-root, non-swap partitions. Within the
Label editor, create a single file system by typing
C. When prompted if this will be a FS
(file system) or swap, choose FS and type in a
mount point (e.g, /mnt). When adding a
disk in post-install mode, sysinstall
will not create entries
in /etc/fstab for you, so the mount point
you specify is not important.You are now ready to write the new label to the disk and
create a file system on it. Do this by typing
W. Ignore any errors from
sysinstall that
it could not mount the new partition. Exit the Label Editor
and sysinstall completely.FinishThe last step is to edit /etc/fstab
to add an entry for your new disk.Using Command Line UtilitiesUsing SlicesThis setup will allow your disk to work correctly with
other operating systems that might be installed on your
computer and will not confuse other operating systems'
fdisk utilities. It is recommended
to use this method for new disk installs. Only use
dedicated mode if you have a good reason
to do so!&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 bs=1k count=1
&prompt.root; fdisk -BI da1 #Initialize your new disk
&prompt.root; disklabel -B -w -r da1s1 auto #Label it.
&prompt.root; disklabel -e da1s1 # Edit the disklabel just created and add any partitions.
&prompt.root; mkdir -p /1
&prompt.root; newfs /dev/da1s1e # Repeat this for every partition you created.
&prompt.root; mount /dev/da1s1e /1 # Mount the partition(s)
&prompt.root; vi /etc/fstab # Add the appropriate entry/entries to your /etc/fstab.If you have an IDE disk, substitute ad
for da. On pre-4.X systems use
wd.DedicatedOS/2If you will not be sharing the new drive with another operating
system, you may use the dedicated mode. Remember
this mode can confuse Microsoft operating systems; however, no damage
will be done by them. IBM's &os2; however, will
appropriate any partition it finds which it does not
understand.&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 bs=1k count=1
&prompt.root; disklabel -Brw da1 auto
&prompt.root; disklabel -e da1 # create the `e' partition
&prompt.root; newfs -d0 /dev/da1e
&prompt.root; mkdir -p /1
&prompt.root; vi /etc/fstab # add an entry for /dev/da1e
&prompt.root; mount /1An alternate method is:&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 count=2
&prompt.root; disklabel /dev/da1 | disklabel -BrR da1 /dev/stdin
&prompt.root; newfs /dev/da1e
&prompt.root; mkdir -p /1
&prompt.root; vi /etc/fstab # add an entry for /dev/da1e
&prompt.root; mount /1Since &os; 5.1-RELEASE, the &man.bsdlabel.8;
utility replaces the old &man.disklabel.8; program. With
&man.bsdlabel.8; a number of obsolete options and parameters
have been retired; in the examples above the option
should be removed with &man.bsdlabel.8;.
For more information, please refer to the &man.bsdlabel.8;
manual page.RAIDSoftware RAIDChristopherShumwayOriginal work by JimBrownRevised by RAIDsoftwareRAIDCCDConcatenated Disk Driver (CCD) ConfigurationWhen choosing a mass storage solution the most important
factors to consider are speed, reliability, and cost. It is
rare to have all three in balance; normally a fast, reliable mass
storage device is expensive, and to cut back on cost either speed
or reliability must be sacrificed.In designing the system described below, cost was chosen
as the most important factor, followed by speed, then reliability.
Data transfer speed for this system is ultimately
constrained by the network. And while reliability is very important,
the CCD drive described below serves online data that is already
fully backed up on CD-R's and can easily be replaced.Defining your own requirements is the first step
in choosing a mass storage solution. If your requirements prefer
speed or reliability over cost, your solution will differ from
the system described in this section.Installing the HardwareIn addition to the IDE system disk, three Western
Digital 30GB, 5400 RPM IDE disks form the core
of the CCD disk described below providing approximately
90GB of online storage. Ideally,
each IDE disk would have its own IDE controller
and cable, but to minimize cost, additional
IDE controllers were not used. Instead the disks were
configured with jumpers so that each IDE controller has
one master, and one slave.Upon reboot, the system BIOS was configured to
automatically detect the disks attached. More importantly,
FreeBSD detected them on reboot:ad0: 19574MB <WDC WD205BA> [39770/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
ad1: 29333MB <WDC WD307AA> [59598/16/63] at ata0-slave UDMA33
ad2: 29333MB <WDC WD307AA> [59598/16/63] at ata1-master UDMA33
ad3: 29333MB <WDC WD307AA> [59598/16/63] at ata1-slave UDMA33If FreeBSD does not detect all the disks, ensure
that you have jumpered them correctly. Most IDE drives
also have a Cable Select jumper. This is
not the jumper for the master/slave
relationship. Consult the drive documentation for help in
identifying the correct jumper.Next, consider how to attach them as part of the file
system. You should research both &man.vinum.8; () and &man.ccd.4;. In this
particular configuration, &man.ccd.4; was chosen.Setting Up the CCDThe driver &man.ccd.4; allows you to take
several identical disks and concatenate them into one
logical file system. In order to use
&man.ccd.4;, you need a kernel with
&man.ccd.4; support built in.
Add this line to your kernel configuration file, rebuild, and
reinstall the kernel:pseudo-device ccd 4On 5.X systems, you have to use instead the following
line:device ccdIn FreeBSD 5.X, it is not necessary to specify
a number of &man.ccd.4; devices, as the &man.ccd.4; device driver is now
self-cloning — new device instances will automatically be
created on demand.The &man.ccd.4; support can also be
loaded as a kernel loadable module in FreeBSD 3.0 or
later.To set up &man.ccd.4;, you must first use
&man.disklabel.8; to label the disks:disklabel -r -w ad1 auto
disklabel -r -w ad2 auto
disklabel -r -w ad3 autoThis creates a disklabel for ad1c, ad2c and ad3c that
spans the entire disk.Since &os; 5.1-RELEASE, the &man.bsdlabel.8;
utility replaces the old &man.disklabel.8; program. With
&man.bsdlabel.8; a number of obsolete options and parameters
have been retired; in the examples above the option
should be removed. For more
information, please refer to the &man.bsdlabel.8;
manual page.The next step is to change the disk label type. You
can use &man.disklabel.8; to edit the
disks:disklabel -e ad1
disklabel -e ad2
disklabel -e ad3This opens up the current disk label on each disk with
the editor specified by the EDITOR
environment variable, typically &man.vi.1;.An unmodified disk label will look something like
this:8 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
c: 60074784 0 unused 0 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 59597)Add a new e partition for &man.ccd.4; to use. This
can usually be copied from the c partition,
but the must
be 4.2BSD. The disk label should
now look something like this:8 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
c: 60074784 0 unused 0 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 59597)
e: 60074784 0 4.2BSD 0 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 59597)Building the File SystemThe device node for
ccd0c may not exist yet, so to
create it, perform the following commands:cd /dev
sh MAKEDEV ccd0In FreeBSD 5.0, &man.devfs.5; will automatically
manage device nodes in /dev, so use of
MAKEDEV is not necessary.Now that you have all of the disks labeled, you must
build the &man.ccd.4;. To do that,
use &man.ccdconfig.8;, with options similar to the following:ccdconfig ccd0 32 0 /dev/ad1e /dev/ad2e /dev/ad3eThe use and meaning of each option is shown below:The first argument is the device to configure, in this case,
/dev/ccd0c. The /dev/
portion is optional.The interleave for the file system. The interleave
defines the size of a stripe in disk blocks, each normally 512 bytes.
So, an interleave of 32 would be 16,384 bytes.Flags for &man.ccdconfig.8;. If you want to enable drive
mirroring, you can specify a flag here. This
configuration does not provide mirroring for
&man.ccd.4;, so it is set at 0 (zero).The final arguments to &man.ccdconfig.8;
are the devices to place into the array. Use the complete pathname
for each device.After running &man.ccdconfig.8; the &man.ccd.4;
is configured. A file system can be installed. Refer to &man.newfs.8;
for options, or simply run: newfs /dev/ccd0cMaking it All AutomaticGenerally, you will want to mount the
&man.ccd.4; upon each reboot. To do this, you must
configure it first. Write out your current configuration to
/etc/ccd.conf using the following command:ccdconfig -g > /etc/ccd.confDuring reboot, the script /etc/rc
runs ccdconfig -C if /etc/ccd.conf
exists. This automatically configures the
&man.ccd.4; so it can be mounted.If you are booting into single user mode, before you can
&man.mount.8; the &man.ccd.4;, you
need to issue the following command to configure the
array:ccdconfig -CTo automatically mount the &man.ccd.4;,
place an entry for the &man.ccd.4; in
/etc/fstab so it will be mounted at
boot time:/dev/ccd0c /media ufs rw 2 2The Vinum Volume ManagerRAIDsoftwareRAIDVinumThe Vinum Volume Manager is a block device driver which
implements virtual disk drives. It isolates disk hardware
from the block device interface and maps data in ways which
result in an increase in flexibility, performance and
reliability compared to the traditional slice view of disk
storage. &man.vinum.8; implements the RAID-0, RAID-1 and
RAID-5 models, both individually and in combination.See for more
information about &man.vinum.8;.Hardware RAIDRAIDhardwareFreeBSD also supports a variety of hardware RAID
controllers. These devices control a RAID subsystem
without the need for FreeBSD specific software to manage the
array.Using an on-card BIOS, the card controls most of the disk operations
itself. The following is a brief setup description using a Promise IDE RAID
controller. When this card is installed and the system is started up, it
displays a prompt requesting information. Follow the instructions
to enter the card's setup screen. From here, you have the ability to
combine all the attached drives. After doing so, the disk(s) will look like
a single drive to FreeBSD. Other RAID levels can be set up
accordingly.
Rebuilding ATA RAID1 ArraysFreeBSD allows you to hot-replace a failed disk in an array. This requires
that you catch it before you reboot.You will probably see something like the following in /var/log/messages or in the &man.dmesg.8;
output:ad6 on monster1 suffered a hard error.
ad6: READ command timeout tag=0 serv=0 - resetting
ad6: trying fallback to PIO mode
ata3: resetting devices .. done
ad6: hard error reading fsbn 1116119 of 0-7 (ad6 bn 1116119; cn 1107 tn 4 sn 11)\\
status=59 error=40
ar0: WARNING - mirror lostUsing &man.atacontrol.8;, check for further information:&prompt.root; atacontrol list
ATA channel 0:
Master: no device present
Slave: acd0 <HL-DT-ST CD-ROM GCR-8520B/1.00> ATA/ATAPI rev 0
ATA channel 1:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 2:
Master: ad4 <MAXTOR 6L080J4/A93.0500> ATA/ATAPI rev 5
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 3:
Master: ad6 <MAXTOR 6L080J4/A93.0500> ATA/ATAPI rev 5
Slave: no device present
&prompt.root; atacontrol status ar0
ar0: ATA RAID1 subdisks: ad4 ad6 status: DEGRADEDYou will first need to detach the disk from the array so that you can
safely remove it:&prompt.root; atacontrol detach 3Replace the disk.Reattach the disk as a spare:&prompt.root; atacontrol attach 3
Master: ad6 <MAXTOR 6L080J4/A93.0500> ATA/ATAPI rev 5
Slave: no device presentRebuild the array:&prompt.root; atacontrol rebuild ar0The rebuild command hangs until complete. However, it is possible to open another
terminal (using AltFn)
and check on the progress by issuing the following command:&prompt.root; dmesg | tail -10
[output removed]
ad6: removed from configuration
ad6: deleted from ar0 disk1
ad6: inserted into ar0 disk1 as spare
&prompt.root; atacontrol status ar0
ar0: ATA RAID1 subdisks: ad4 ad6 status: REBUILDING 0% completedWait until this operation completes.MarcFonvieilleContributed by USB Storage DevicesUSBdisksA lot of external storage solutions, nowadays, use the
Universal Serial Bus (USB): hard drives, USB thumbdrives, CD-R
burners, etc. &os; provides support for these devices.ConfigurationThe USB mass storage devices driver, &man.umass.4;,
provides the support for USB storage devices. If you use the
GENERIC kernel, you do not have to change
anything in your configuration. If you use a custom kernel,
be sure that the following lines are present in your kernel
configuration file:device scbus
device da
device pass
device uhci
device ohci
device usb
device umassThe &man.umass.4; driver uses the SCSI subsystem to access
to the USB storage devices, your USB device will be seen as a
SCSI device by the system. Depending on the USB chipset on
your motherboard, you only need either device
uhci or device ohci, however
having both in the kernel configuration file is harmless. Do
not forget to compile and install the new kernel if you added
any lines.If your USB device is a CD-R or DVD burner, the SCSI CD-ROM
driver, &man.cd.4;, must be added to the kernel via the
line:device cdSince the burner is seen as a SCSI drive, the driver
&man.atapicam.4; should not be used in the kernel
configuration.Support for USB 2.0 controllers is provided on
&os; 5.X, and on the 4.X branch since &os; 4.10-RELEASE.
You have to add:device ehcito your configuration file for USB 2.0 support. Note
&man.uhci.4; and &man.ohci.4; drivers are still needed if you
want USB 1.X support.On &os; 4.X, the USB daemon (&man.usbd.8;) must be
running to be able to see some USB devices. To enable it,
add usbd_enable="YES" to your
/etc/rc.conf file and reboot the
machine.Testing the ConfigurationThe configuration is ready to be tested: plug in your USB
device, and in the system message buffer (&man.dmesg.8;), the
drive should appear as something like:umass0: USB Solid state disk, rev 1.10/1.00, addr 2
GEOM: create disk da0 dp=0xc2d74850
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <Generic Traveling Disk 1.11> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 1.000MB/s transfers
da0: 126MB (258048 512 byte sectors: 64H 32S/T 126C)Of course, the brand, the device node
(da0) and other details can differ
according to your configuration.Since the USB device is seen as a SCSI one, the
camcontrol command can be used to list the
USB storage devices attached to the system:&prompt.root; camcontrol devlist
<Generic Traveling Disk 1.11> at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass0)If the drive comes with a file system, you should be able
to mount it. The will help you
to format and create partitions on the USB drive if
needed.If you unplug the device (the disk must be unmounted
before), you should see, in the system message buffer,
something like the following:umass0: at uhub0 port 1 (addr 2) disconnected
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): lost device
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): removing device entry
GEOM: destroy disk da0 dp=0xc2d74850
umass0: detachedFurther ReadingBeside the Adding
Disks and Mounting and
Unmounting File Systems sections, reading various
manual pages may be also useful: &man.umass.4;,
&man.camcontrol.8;, and &man.usbdevs.8;.MikeMeyerContributed by Creating and Using Optical Media (CDs)CDROMscreatingIntroductionCDs have a number of features that differentiate them from
conventional disks. Initially, they were not writable by the
user. They are designed so that they can be read continuously without
delays to move the head between tracks. They are also much easier
to transport between systems than similarly sized media were at the
time.CDs do have tracks, but this refers to a section of data to
be read continuously and not a physical property of the disk. To
produce a CD on FreeBSD, you prepare the data files that are going
to make up the tracks on the CD, then write the tracks to the
CD.ISO 9660file systemsISO 9660The ISO 9660 file system was designed to deal with these
differences. It unfortunately codifies file system limits that were
common then. Fortunately, it provides an extension mechanism that
allows properly written CDs to exceed those limits while still
working with systems that do not support those extensions.sysutils/cdrtoolsThe sysutils/cdrtools
port includes &man.mkisofs.8;, a program that you can use to
produce a data file containing an ISO 9660 file
system. It has options that support various extensions, and is
described below.CD burnerATAPIWhich tool to use to burn the CD depends on whether your CD burner
is ATAPI or something else. ATAPI CD burners use the burncd program that is part of
the base system. SCSI and USB CD burners should use
cdrecord from
the sysutils/cdrtools port.burncd has a limited number of
supported drives. To find out if a drive is supported, see the
CD-R/RW supported
drives list.CD burnerATAPI/CAM driverIf you run &os; 5.X, &os; 4.8-RELEASE version or
higher, it will be possible to use cdrecord and other tools
for SCSI drives on an ATAPI hardware with the ATAPI/CAM module.If you want a CD burning software with a graphical user
interface, you should have a look to
X-CD-Roast or
K3b. These tools are available as
packages or from the sysutils/xcdroast and sysutils/k3b ports.
X-CD-Roast and
K3b require the ATAPI/CAM module with ATAPI
hardware.mkisofsThe &man.mkisofs.8; program, which is part of the
sysutils/cdrtools port,
produces an ISO 9660 file system
that is an image of a directory tree in the &unix; file system name
space. The simplest usage is:&prompt.root; mkisofs -o imagefile.iso/path/to/treefile systemsISO 9660This command will create an imagefile.iso
containing an ISO 9660 file system that is a copy of the tree at
/path/to/tree. In the process, it will
map the file names to names that fit the limitations of the
standard ISO 9660 file system, and will exclude files that have
names uncharacteristic of ISO file systems.file systemsHFSfile systemsJolietA number of options are available to overcome those
restrictions. In particular, enables the
Rock Ridge extensions common to &unix; systems,
enables Joliet extensions used by Microsoft systems, and
can be used to create HFS file systems used
by &macos;.For CDs that are going to be used only on FreeBSD systems,
can be used to disable all filename
restrictions. When used with , it produces a
file system image that is identical to the FreeBSD tree you started
from, though it may violate the ISO 9660 standard in a number of
ways.CDROMscreating bootableThe last option of general use is . This is
used to specify the location of the boot image for use in producing an
El Torito bootable CD. This option takes an
argument which is the path to a boot image from the top of the
tree being written to the CD. So, given that
/tmp/myboot holds a bootable FreeBSD system
with the boot image in
/tmp/myboot/boot/cdboot, you could produce the
image of an ISO 9660 file system in
/tmp/bootable.iso like so:&prompt.root; mkisofs -U -R -b boot/cdboot -o /tmp/bootable.iso /tmp/mybootHaving done that, if you have vn
(FreeBSD 4.X), or md
(FreeBSD 5.X)
configured in your kernel, you can mount the file system with:&prompt.root; vnconfig -e vn0c /tmp/bootable.iso
&prompt.root; mount -t cd9660 /dev/vn0c /mntfor FreeBSD 4.X, and for FreeBSD 5.X:&prompt.root; mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /tmp/bootable.iso -u 0
&prompt.root; mount -t cd9660 /dev/md0 /mntAt which point you can verify that /mnt
and /tmp/myboot are identical.There are many other options you can use with
&man.mkisofs.8; to fine-tune its behavior. In particular:
modifications to an ISO 9660 layout and the creation of Joliet
and HFS discs. See the &man.mkisofs.8; manual page for details.burncdCDROMsburningIf you have an ATAPI CD burner, you can use the
burncd command to burn an ISO image onto a
CD. burncd is part of the base system, installed
as /usr/sbin/burncd. Usage is very simple, as
it has few options:&prompt.root; burncd -f cddevice data imagefile.iso fixateWill burn a copy of imagefile.iso on
cddevice. The default device is
/dev/acd0 (or /dev/acd0c under &os; 4.X). See &man.burncd.8; for options to
set the write speed, eject the CD after burning, and write audio
data.cdrecordIf you do not have an ATAPI CD burner, you will have to use
cdrecord to burn your
CDs. cdrecord is not part of the base system;
you must install it from either the port at sysutils/cdrtools
or the appropriate
package. Changes to the base system can cause binary versions of
this program to fail, possibly resulting in a
coaster. You should therefore either upgrade the
port when you upgrade your system, or if you are tracking -STABLE, upgrade the port when a
new version becomes available.While cdrecord has many options, basic usage
is even simpler than burncd. Burning an ISO 9660
image is done with:&prompt.root; cdrecord dev=deviceimagefile.isoThe tricky part of using cdrecord is finding
the to use. To find the proper setting, use
the flag of cdrecord,
which might produce results like this:CDROMsburning&prompt.root; cdrecord -scanbus
Cdrecord 1.9 (i386-unknown-freebsd4.2) Copyright (C) 1995-2000 Jörg Schilling
Using libscg version 'schily-0.1'
scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST39236LW ' '0004' Disk
0,1,0 1) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST39173W ' '5958' Disk
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) 'iomega ' 'jaz 1GB ' 'J.86' Removable Disk
0,4,0 4) 'NEC ' 'CD-ROM DRIVE:466' '1.26' Removable CD-ROM
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) *
0,7,0 7) *
scsibus1:
1,0,0 100) *
1,1,0 101) *
1,2,0 102) *
1,3,0 103) *
1,4,0 104) *
1,5,0 105) 'YAMAHA ' 'CRW4260 ' '1.0q' Removable CD-ROM
1,6,0 106) 'ARTEC ' 'AM12S ' '1.06' Scanner
1,7,0 107) *This lists the appropriate value for the
devices on the list. Locate your CD burner, and use the three
numbers separated by commas as the value for
. In this case, the CRW device is 1,5,0, so the
appropriate input would be
. There are easier
ways to specify this value; see &man.cdrecord.1; for
details. That is also the place to look for information on writing
audio tracks, controlling the speed, and other things.Duplicating Audio CDsYou can duplicate an audio CD by extracting the audio data from
the CD to a series of files, and then writing these files to a blank
CD. The process is slightly different for ATAPI and SCSI
drives.SCSI DrivesUse cdda2wav to extract the audio.&prompt.user; cdda2wav -v255 -D2,0 -B -OwavUse cdrecord to write the
.wav files.&prompt.user; cdrecord -v dev=2,0 -dao -useinfo *.wavMake sure that 2.0 is set
appropriately, as described in .ATAPI DrivesThe ATAPI CD driver makes each track available as
/dev/acddtnn,
where d is the drive number, and
nn is the track number written with two
decimal digits, prefixed with zero as needed.
So the first track on the first disk is
/dev/acd0t01, the second is
/dev/acd0t02, the third is
/dev/acd0t03, and so on.Make sure the appropriate files exist in
/dev.&prompt.root; cd /dev
&prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV acd0t99In FreeBSD 5.0, &man.devfs.5; will automatically
create and manage entries in /dev
for you, so it is not necessary to use
MAKEDEV.Extract each track using &man.dd.1;. You must also use a
specific block size when extracting the files.&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/acd0t01 of=track1.cdr bs=2352
&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/acd0t02 of=track2.cdr bs=2352
...
Burn the extracted files to disk using
burncd. You must specify that these are audio
files, and that burncd should fixate the disk
when finished.&prompt.root; burncd -f /dev/acd0 audio track1.cdr track2.cdr ... fixateDuplicating Data CDsYou can copy a data CD to a image file that is
functionally equivalent to the image file created with
&man.mkisofs.8;, and you can use it to duplicate
any data CD. The example given here assumes that your CDROM
device is acd0. Substitute your
correct CDROM device. Under &os; 4.X, a c must be appended
to the end of the device name to indicate the entire partition
or, in the case of CDROMs, the entire disc.&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/acd0 of=file.iso bs=2048Now that you have an image, you can burn it to CD as
described above.Using Data CDsNow that you have created a standard data CDROM, you
probably want to mount it and read the data on it. By
default, &man.mount.8; assumes that a file system is of type
ufs. If you try something like:&prompt.root; mount /dev/cd0 /mntyou will get a complaint about Incorrect super
block, and no mount. The CDROM is not a
UFS file system, so attempts to mount it
as such will fail. You just need to tell &man.mount.8; that
the file system is of type ISO9660, and
everything will work. You do this by specifying the
option &man.mount.8;. For
example, if you want to mount the CDROM device,
/dev/cd0, under
/mnt, you would execute:&prompt.root; mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mntNote that your device name
(/dev/cd0 in this example) could be
different, depending on the interface your CDROM uses. Also,
the option just executes
&man.mount.cd9660.8;. The above example could be shortened
to:&prompt.root; mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mntYou can generally use data CDROMs from any vendor in this
way. Disks with certain ISO 9660 extensions might behave
oddly, however. For example, Joliet disks store all filenames
in two-byte Unicode characters. The FreeBSD kernel does not
speak Unicode (yet!), so non-English characters show up as
question marks. (If you are running FreeBSD 4.3 or later, the
CD9660 driver includes hooks to load an appropriate Unicode
conversion table on the fly. Modules for some of the common
encodings are available via the
sysutils/cd9660_unicode port.)Occasionally, you might get Device not
configured when trying to mount a CDROM. This
usually means that the CDROM drive thinks that there is no
disk in the tray, or that the drive is not visible on the bus.
It can take a couple of seconds for a CDROM drive to realize
that it has been fed, so be patient.Sometimes, a SCSI CDROM may be missed because it did not
have enough time to answer the bus reset. If you have a SCSI
CDROM please add the following option to your kernel
configuration and rebuild your kernel.options SCSI_DELAY=15000This tells your SCSI bus to pause 15 seconds during boot,
to give your CDROM drive every possible chance to answer the
bus reset.Burning Raw Data CDsYou can choose to burn a file directly to CD, without
creating an ISO 9660 file system. Some people do this for
backup purposes. This runs more quickly than burning a
standard CD:&prompt.root; burncd -f /dev/acd1 -s 12 data archive.tar.gz fixateIn order to retrieve the data burned to such a CD, you
must read data from the raw device node:&prompt.root; tar xzvf /dev/acd1You cannot mount this disk as you would a normal CDROM.
Such a CDROM cannot be read under any operating system
except FreeBSD. If you want to be able to mount the CD, or
share data with another operating system, you must use
&man.mkisofs.8; as described above.MarcFonvieilleContributed by CD burnerATAPI/CAM driverUsing the ATAPI/CAM DriverThis driver allows ATAPI devices (CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD
drives etc...) to be accessed through the SCSI subsystem, and
so allows the use of applications like sysutils/cdrdao or
&man.cdrecord.1;.To use this driver, you will need to add the following
lines to your kernel configuration file:device atapicam
device scbus
device cd
device passYou also need the following line in your kernel
configuration file:device atawhich should already be present.Then rebuild, install your new kernel, and reboot your
machine. During the boot process, your burner should show up,
like so:acd0: CD-RW <MATSHITA CD-RW/DVD-ROM UJDA740> at ata1-master PIO4
cd0 at ata1 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
cd0: <MATSHITA CDRW/DVD UJDA740 1.00> Removable CD-ROM SCSI-0 device
cd0: 16.000MB/s transfers
cd0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present - tray closedThe drive could now be accessed via the
/dev/cd0 device name, for example to
mount a CD-ROM on /mnt, just type the
following:&prompt.root; mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mntAs root, you can run the following
command to get the SCSI address of the burner:&prompt.root; camcontrol devlist
<MATSHITA CDRW/DVD UJDA740 1.00> at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,cd0)So 1,0,0 will be the SCSI address to
use with &man.cdrecord.1; and other SCSI application.For more information about ATAPI/CAM and SCSI system,
refer to the &man.atapicam.4; and &man.cam.4; manual
pages.MarcFonvieilleContributed by AndyPolyakovWith inputs from Creating and Using Optical Media (DVDs)DVDburningIntroductionCompared to the CD, the DVD is the next generation of
optical media storage technology. The DVD can hold more data
than any CD and is nowadays the standard for video
publishing.Five physical recordable formats can be defined for what
we will call a recordable DVD:DVD-R: This was the first DVD recordable format
available. The DVD-R standard is defined by the DVD Forum.
This format is write once.DVD-RW: This is the rewriteable version of
the DVD-R standard. A DVD-RW can be rewritten about 1000
times.DVD-RAM: This is also a rewriteable format
supported by the DVD Forum. A DVD-RAM can be seen as a
removable hard drive. However, this media is not
compatible with most DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players;
only a few DVD writers support the DVD-RAM format.DVD+RW: This is a rewriteable format defined by
the DVD+RW
Alliance. A DVD+RW can be rewritten about 1000
times.DVD+R: This format is the write once variation
of the DVD+RW format.A single layer recordable DVD can hold up to
4,700,000,000 bytes which is actually 4.38 GB or
4485 MB (1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes).A distinction must be made between the physical media and
the application. For example, a DVD-Video is a specific
file layout that can be written on any recordable DVD
physical media: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW etc. Before choosing
the type of media, you must be sure that both the burner and the
DVD-Video player (a standalone player or a DVD-ROM drive on
a computer) are compatible with the media under consideration.ConfigurationThe program &man.growisofs.1; will be used to perform DVD
recording. This command is part of the
dvd+rw-tools utilities (sysutils/dvd+rw-tools). The
dvd+rw-tools support all DVD media
types.These tools use the SCSI subsystem to access to the
devices, therefore the ATAPI/CAM
support must be added to your kernel. If your burner
uses the USB interface this addition is useless, and you should
read the for more details on USB
devices configuration.You also have to enable DMA access for ATAPI devices, this
can be done in adding the following line to the
/boot/loader.conf file:hw.ata.atapi_dma="1"Before attempting to use the
dvd+rw-tools you should consult the
dvd+rw-tools'
hardware compatibility notes for any information
related to your DVD burner.If you want a graphical user interface, you should have
a look to K3b (sysutils/k3b) which provides a
user friendly interface to &man.growisofs.1; and many others
burning tools.Burning Data DVDsThe &man.growisofs.1; command is a frontend to mkisofs, it will invoke
&man.mkisofs.8; to create the file system layout and will
perform the write on the DVD. This means you do not need to
create an image of the data before the burning process.To burn onto a DVD+R or a DVD-R the data from the /path/to/data directory, use the
following command:&prompt.root; growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cd0 -J -R /path/to/dataThe options are passed to
&man.mkisofs.8; for the file system creation (in this case: an
ISO 9660 file system with Joliet and Rock Ridge extensions),
consult the &man.mkisofs.8; manual page for more
details.The option is used for the initial
session recording in any case: multiple sessions or not. The
DVD device, /dev/cd0, must be
changed according to your configuration. The
parameter will close the disk,
the recording will be unappendable. In return this should provide better
media compatibility with DVD-ROM drives.It is also possible to burn a pre-mastered image, for
example to burn the image
imagefile.iso, we will run:&prompt.root; growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cd0=imagefile.isoThe write speed should be detected and automatically set
according to the media and the drive being used. If you want
to force the write speed, use the
parameter. For more information, read the &man.growisofs.1;
manual page.DVDDVD-VideoBurning a DVD-VideoA DVD-Video is a specific file layout based on ISO 9660
and the micro-UDF (M-UDF) specifications. The DVD-Video also
presents a specific data structure hierarchy, it is the reason
why you need a particular program such as multimedia/dvdauthor to author the
DVD.If you already have an image of the DVD-Video file system,
just burn it in the same way as for any image, see the
previous section for an example. If you have made the DVD
authoring and the result is in, for example, the directory
/path/to/video, the
following command should be used to burn the DVD-Video:&prompt.root; growisofs -Z /dev/cd0 -dvd-video /path/to/videoThe option will be passed down to
&man.mkisofs.8; and will instruct it to create a DVD-Video file system
layout. Beside this, the option
implies &man.growisofs.1;
option.DVDDVD+RWUsing a DVD+RWUnlike CD-RW, a virgin DVD+RW needs to be formatted before
first use. The &man.growisofs.1; program will take care of it
automatically whenever appropriate, which is the
recommended way. However you can use the
dvd+rw-format command to format the
DVD+RW:&prompt.root; dvd+rw-format /dev/cd0You need to perform this operation just once, keep in mind
that only virgin DVD+RW medias need to be formatted. Then you
can burn the DVD+RW in the way seen in previous
sections.If you want to burn new data (burn a totally new file
system not append some data) onto a DVD+RW, you do not need to
blank it, you just have to write over the previous recording
(in performing a new initial session), like this:&prompt.root; growisofs -Z /dev/cd0 -J -R /path/to/newdataDVD+RW format offers the possibility to easily append data
to a previous recording. The operation consists in merging a
new session to the existing one, it is not multisession
writing, &man.growisofs.1; will grow the
ISO 9660 file system present on the media.For example, if we want to append data to our previous
DVD+RW, we have to use the following:&prompt.root; growisofs -M /dev/cd0 -J -R /path/to/nextdataThe same &man.mkisofs.8; options we used to burn the
initial session should be used during next writes.You may want to use the
option if you want better media compatibility with DVD-ROM
drives. In the DVD+RW case, this will not prevent you from
adding data.If for any reason you really want to blank the media, do
the following:&prompt.root; growisofs -Z /dev/cd0=/dev/zeroDVDDVD-RWUsing a DVD-RWA DVD-RW accepts two disc formats: the incremental
sequential one and the restricted overwrite. By default
DVD-RW discs are in sequential format.A virgin DVD-RW can be directly written without the need
of a formatting operation, however a non-virgin DVD-RW in
sequential format needs to be blanked before to be able to
write a new initial session.To blank a DVD-RW in sequential mode, run:&prompt.root; dvd+rw-format -blank=full /dev/cd0A full blanking () will take
about one hour on a 1x media. A fast blanking can be
performed using the option if the
DVD-RW will be recorded in Disk-At-Once (DAO) mode. To burn
the DVD-RW in DAO mode, use the command:&prompt.root; growisofs -use-the-force-luke=dao -Z /dev/cd0=imagefile.isoThe option
should not be required since &man.growisofs.1; attempts to
detect minimally (fast blanked) media and engage DAO
write.In fact one should use restricted overwrite mode with
any DVD-RW, this format is more flexible than the default
incremental sequential one.To write data on a sequential DVD-RW, use the same
instructions as for the other DVD formats:&prompt.root; growisofs -Z /dev/cd0 -J -R /path/to/dataIf you want to append some data to your previous
recording, you will have to use the &man.growisofs.1;
option. However, if you perform data
addition on a DVD-RW in incremental sequential mode, a new
session will be created on the disc and the result will be a
multi-session disc.A DVD-RW in restricted overwrite format does not need to
be blanked before a new initial session, you just have to
overwrite the disc with the option, this
is similar to the DVD+RW case. It is also possible to grow an
existing ISO 9660 file system written on the disc in a same
way as for a DVD+RW with the option. The
result will be a one-session DVD.To put a DVD-RW in the restricted overwrite format, the
following command must be used:&prompt.root; dvd+rw-format /dev/cd0To change back to the sequential format use:&prompt.root; dvd+rw-format -blank=full /dev/cd0MultisessionVery few DVD-ROM drives support
multisession DVDs, they will most of time, hopefully, only read
the first session. DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RW in sequential
format can accept multiple sessions, the notion of multiple
sessions does not exist for the DVD+RW and the DVD-RW
restricted overwrite formats.Using the following command after an initial (non-closed)
session on a DVD+R, DVD-R, or DVD-RW in sequential format,
will add a new session to the disc:&prompt.root; growisofs -M /dev/cd0 -J -R /path/to/nextdataUsing this command line with a DVD+RW or a DVD-RW in restricted
overwrite mode, will append data in merging the new session to
the existing one. The result will be a single-session disc.
This is the way used to add data after an initial write on these
medias.Some space on the media is used between each session for
end and start of sessions. Therefore, one should add
sessions with large amount of data to optimize media space.
The number of sessions is limited to 154 for a DVD+R,
about 2000 for a DVD-R, and 127 for a DVD+R Double
Layer.For More InformationTo obtain more information about a DVD, the
dvd+rw-mediainfo
/dev/cd0 command can be
ran with the disc in the drive.More information about the
dvd+rw-tools can be found in
the &man.growisofs.1; manual page, on the dvd+rw-tools
web site and in the cdwrite mailing
list archives.The dvd+rw-mediainfo output of the
resulting recording or the media with issues is mandatory
for any problem report. Without this output, it will be
quite impossible to help you.JulioMerinoOriginal work by MartinKarlssonRewritten by Creating and Using Floppy DisksStoring data on floppy disks is sometimes useful, for
example when one does not have any other removable storage media
or when one needs to transfer small amounts of data to another
computer.This section will explain how to use floppy disks in
FreeBSD. It will primarily cover formatting and usage of
3.5inch DOS floppies, but the concepts are similar for other
floppy disk formats.Formatting FloppiesThe DeviceFloppy disks are accessed through entries in
/dev, just like other devices. To
access the raw floppy disk in 4.X and earlier releases, one
uses
/dev/fdN,
where N stands for the drive
number, usually 0, or
/dev/fdNX,
where X stands for a
letter.In 5.0 or newer releases, simply use
/dev/fdN.The Disk Size in 4.X and Earlier ReleasesThere are also /dev/fdN.size
devices, where size is a floppy disk
size in kilobytes. These entries are used at low-level format
time to determine the disk size. 1440kB is the size that will be
used in the following examples.Sometimes the entries under /dev will
have to be (re)created. To do that, issue:&prompt.root; cd /dev && ./MAKEDEV "fd*"The Disk Size in 5.0 and Newer ReleasesIn 5.0, &man.devfs.5; will automatically
manage device nodes in /dev, so use of
MAKEDEV is not necessary.The desired disk size is passed to &man.fdformat.1; through
the flag. Supported sizes are listed in
&man.fdcontrol.8;, but be advised that 1440kB is what works best.FormattingA floppy disk needs to be low-level formated before it
can be used. This is usually done by the vendor, but
formatting is a good way to check media integrity. Although
it is possible to force larger (or smaller) disk sizes,
1440kB is what most floppy disks are designed for.To low-level format the floppy disk you need to use
&man.fdformat.1;. This utility expects the device name as an
argument.Make note of any error messages, as these can help
determine if the disk is good or bad.Formatting in 4.X and Earlier ReleasesUse the
/dev/fdN.size
devices to format the floppy. Insert a new 3.5inch floppy
disk in your drive and issue:&prompt.root; /usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/fd0.1440Formatting in 5.0 and Newer ReleasesUse the
/dev/fdN
devices to format the floppy. Insert a new 3.5inch floppy
disk in your drive and issue:&prompt.root; /usr/sbin/fdformat -f 1440 /dev/fd0The Disk LabelAfter low-level formatting the disk, you will need to
place a disk label on it. This disk label will be destroyed
later, but it is needed by the system to determine the size of
the disk and its geometry later.The new disk label will take over the whole disk, and will
contain all the proper information about the geometry of the
floppy. The geometry values for the disk label are listed in
/etc/disktab.You can run now &man.disklabel.8; like so:&prompt.root; /sbin/disklabel -B -r -w /dev/fd0 fd1440Since &os; 5.1-RELEASE, the &man.bsdlabel.8;
utility replaces the old &man.disklabel.8; program. With
&man.bsdlabel.8; a number of obsolete options and parameters
have been retired; in the example above the option
should be removed. For more
information, please refer to the &man.bsdlabel.8;
manual page.The File SystemNow the floppy is ready to be high-level formated. This
will place a new file system on it, which will let FreeBSD read
and write to the disk. After creating the new file system, the
disk label is destroyed, so if you want to reformat the disk, you
will have to recreate the disk label.The floppy's file system can be either UFS or FAT.
FAT is generally a better choice for floppies.To put a new file system on the floppy, issue:&prompt.root; /sbin/newfs_msdos /dev/fd0The disk is now ready for use.Using the FloppyTo use the floppy, mount it with &man.mount.msdos.8; (in
4.X and earlier releases) or &man.mount.msdosfs.8; (in 5.0 or
newer releases). One can also use
emulators/mtools from the ports
collection.Creating and Using Data Tapestape mediaThe major tape media are the 4mm, 8mm, QIC, mini-cartridge and
DLT.4mm (DDS: Digital Data Storage)tape mediaDDS (4mm) tapestape mediaQIC tapes4mm tapes are replacing QIC as the workstation backup media of
choice. This trend accelerated greatly when Conner purchased Archive,
a leading manufacturer of QIC drives, and then stopped production of
QIC drives. 4mm drives are small and quiet but do not have the
reputation for reliability that is enjoyed by 8mm drives. The
cartridges are less expensive and smaller (3 x 2 x 0.5 inches, 76 x 51
x 12 mm) than 8mm cartridges. 4mm, like 8mm, has comparatively short
head life for the same reason, both use helical scan.Data throughput on these drives starts ~150 kB/s, peaking at ~500 kB/s.
Data capacity starts at 1.3 GB and ends at 2.0 GB. Hardware
compression, available with most of these drives, approximately
doubles the capacity. Multi-drive tape library units can have 6
drives in a single cabinet with automatic tape changing. Library
capacities reach 240 GB.The DDS-3 standard now supports tape capacities up to 12 GB (or
24 GB compressed).4mm drives, like 8mm drives, use helical-scan. All the benefits
and drawbacks of helical-scan apply to both 4mm and 8mm drives.Tapes should be retired from use after 2,000 passes or 100 full
backups.8mm (Exabyte)tape mediaExabyte (8mm) tapes8mm tapes are the most common SCSI tape drives; they are the best
choice of exchanging tapes. Nearly every site has an Exabyte 2 GB 8mm
tape drive. 8mm drives are reliable, convenient and quiet. Cartridges
are inexpensive and small (4.8 x 3.3 x 0.6 inches; 122 x 84 x 15 mm).
One downside of 8mm tape is relatively short head and tape life due to
the high rate of relative motion of the tape across the heads.Data throughput ranges from ~250 kB/s to ~500 kB/s. Data sizes start
at 300 MB and go up to 7 GB. Hardware compression, available with
most of these drives, approximately doubles the capacity. These
drives are available as single units or multi-drive tape libraries
with 6 drives and 120 tapes in a single cabinet. Tapes are changed
automatically by the unit. Library capacities reach 840+ GB.The Exabyte Mammoth model supports 12 GB on one tape
(24 GB with compression) and costs approximately twice as much as
conventional tape drives.Data is recorded onto the tape using helical-scan, the heads are
positioned at an angle to the media (approximately 6 degrees). The
tape wraps around 270 degrees of the spool that holds the heads. The
spool spins while the tape slides over the spool. The result is a
high density of data and closely packed tracks that angle across the
tape from one edge to the other.QICtape mediaQIC-150QIC-150 tapes and drives are, perhaps, the most common tape drive
and media around. QIC tape drives are the least expensive serious
backup drives. The downside is the cost of media. QIC tapes are
expensive compared to 8mm or 4mm tapes, up to 5 times the price per GB
data storage. But, if your needs can be satisfied with a half-dozen
tapes, QIC may be the correct choice. QIC is the
most common tape drive. Every site has a QIC
drive of some density or another. Therein lies the rub, QIC has a
large number of densities on physically similar (sometimes identical)
tapes. QIC drives are not quiet. These drives audibly seek before
they begin to record data and are clearly audible whenever reading,
writing or seeking. QIC tapes measure (6 x 4 x 0.7 inches; 15.2 x
10.2 x 1.7 mm).Data throughput ranges from ~150 kB/s to ~500 kB/s. Data capacity
ranges from 40 MB to 15 GB. Hardware compression is available on many
of the newer QIC drives. QIC drives are less frequently installed;
they are being supplanted by DAT drives.Data is recorded onto the tape in tracks. The tracks run along
the long axis of the tape media from one end to the other. The number
of tracks, and therefore the width of a track, varies with the tape's
capacity. Most if not all newer drives provide backward-compatibility
at least for reading (but often also for writing). QIC has a good
reputation regarding the safety of the data (the mechanics are simpler
and more robust than for helical scan drives).Tapes should be retired from use after 5,000 backups.DLTtape mediaDLTDLT has the fastest data transfer rate of all the drive types
listed here. The 1/2" (12.5mm) tape is contained in a single spool
cartridge (4 x 4 x 1 inches; 100 x 100 x 25 mm). The cartridge has a
swinging gate along one entire side of the cartridge. The drive
mechanism opens this gate to extract the tape leader. The tape leader
has an oval hole in it which the drive uses to hook the tape. The
take-up spool is located inside the tape drive. All the other tape
cartridges listed here (9 track tapes are the only exception) have
both the supply and take-up spools located inside the tape cartridge
itself.Data throughput is approximately 1.5 MB/s, three times the throughput of
4mm, 8mm, or QIC tape drives. Data capacities range from 10 GB to 20 GB
for a single drive. Drives are available in both multi-tape changers
and multi-tape, multi-drive tape libraries containing from 5 to 900
tapes over 1 to 20 drives, providing from 50 GB to 9 TB of
storage.With compression, DLT Type IV format supports up to 70 GB
capacity.Data is recorded onto the tape in tracks parallel to the direction
of travel (just like QIC tapes). Two tracks are written at once.
Read/write head lifetimes are relatively long; once the tape stops
moving, there is no relative motion between the heads and the
tape.AITtape mediaAITAIT is a new format from Sony, and can hold up to 50 GB (with
compression) per tape. The tapes contain memory chips which retain an
index of the tape's contents. This index can be rapidly read by the
tape drive to determine the position of files on the tape, instead of
the several minutes that would be required for other tapes. Software
such as SAMS:Alexandria can operate forty or more AIT tape libraries,
communicating directly with the tape's memory chip to display the
contents on screen, determine what files were backed up to which
tape, locate the correct tape, load it, and restore the data from the
tape.Libraries like this cost in the region of $20,000, pricing them a
little out of the hobbyist market.Using a New Tape for the First TimeThe first time that you try to read or write a new, completely
blank tape, the operation will fail. The console messages should be
similar to:sa0(ncr1:4:0): NOT READY asc:4,1
sa0(ncr1:4:0): Logical unit is in process of becoming readyThe tape does not contain an Identifier Block (block number 0).
All QIC tape drives since the adoption of QIC-525 standard write an
Identifier Block to the tape. There are two solutions:mt fsf 1 causes the tape drive to write an
Identifier Block to the tape.Use the front panel button to eject the tape.Re-insert the tape and dump data to
the tape.dump will report DUMP: End of tape
detected and the console will show: HARDWARE
FAILURE info:280 asc:80,96.rewind the tape using: mt rewind.Subsequent tape operations are successful.Backups to FloppiesCan I Use Floppies for Backing Up My Data?backup floppiesfloppy disksFloppy disks are not really a suitable media for
making backups as:The media is unreliable, especially over long periods of
time.Backing up and restoring is very slow.They have a very limited capacity (the days of backing up
an entire hard disk onto a dozen or so floppies has long since
passed).However, if you have no other method of backing up your data then
floppy disks are better than no backup at all.If you do have to use floppy disks then ensure that you use good
quality ones. Floppies that have been lying around the office for a
couple of years are a bad choice. Ideally use new ones from a
reputable manufacturer.So How Do I Backup My Data to Floppies?The best way to backup to floppy disk is to use
&man.tar.1; with the (multi
volume) option, which allows backups to span multiple
floppies.To backup all the files in the current directory and sub-directory
use this (as root):&prompt.root; tar Mcvf /dev/fd0 *When the first floppy is full &man.tar.1; will prompt you to
insert the next volume (because &man.tar.1; is media independent it
refers to volumes; in this context it means floppy disk).Prepare volume #2 for /dev/fd0 and hit return:This is repeated (with the volume number incrementing) until all
the specified files have been archived.Can I Compress My Backups?targzipcompressionUnfortunately, &man.tar.1; will not allow the
option to be used for multi-volume archives.
You could, of course, &man.gzip.1; all the files,
&man.tar.1; them to the floppies, then
&man.gunzip.1; the files again!How Do I Restore My Backups?To restore the entire archive use:&prompt.root; tar Mxvf /dev/fd0There are two ways that you can use to restore only
specific files. First, you can start with the first floppy
and use:&prompt.root; tar Mxvf /dev/fd0 filenameThe utility &man.tar.1; will prompt you to insert subsequent floppies until it
finds the required file.Alternatively, if you know which floppy the file is on then you
can simply insert that floppy and use the same command as above. Note
that if the first file on the floppy is a continuation from the
previous one then &man.tar.1; will warn you that it cannot
restore it, even if you have not asked it to!Backup BasicsThe three major backup programs are
&man.dump.8;,
&man.tar.1;,
and
&man.cpio.1;.Dump and Restorebackup softwaredump / restoredumprestoreThe traditional &unix; backup programs are
dump and restore. They
operate on the drive as a collection of disk blocks, below the
abstractions of files, links and directories that are created by
the file systems. dump backs up an entire
file system on a device. It is unable to backup only part of a
file system or a directory tree that spans more than one
file system. dump does not write files and
directories to tape, but rather writes the raw data blocks that
comprise files and directories.If you use dump on your root directory, you
would not back up /home,
/usr or many other directories since
these are typically mount points for other file systems or
symbolic links into those file systems.dump has quirks that remain from its early days in
Version 6 of AT&T UNIX (circa 1975). The default
parameters are suitable for 9-track tapes (6250 bpi), not the
high-density media available today (up to 62,182 ftpi). These
defaults must be overridden on the command line to utilize the
capacity of current tape drives..rhostsIt is also possible to backup data across the network to a
tape drive attached to another computer with rdump and
rrestore. Both programs rely upon rcmd and
ruserok to access the remote tape drive. Therefore,
the user performing the backup must be listed in the
.rhosts file on the remote computer. The
arguments to rdump and rrestore must be suitable
to use on the remote computer. When
rdumping from a FreeBSD computer to an
Exabyte tape drive connected to a Sun called
komodo, use:&prompt.root; /sbin/rdump 0dsbfu 54000 13000 126 komodo:/dev/nsa8 /dev/da0a 2>&1Beware: there are security implications to
allowing .rhosts authentication. Evaluate your
situation carefully.It is also possible to use dump and
restore in a more secure fashion over
ssh.Using dump over ssh&prompt.root; /sbin/dump -0uan -f - /usr | gzip -2 | ssh -c blowfish \
targetuser@targetmachine.example.com dd of=/mybigfiles/dump-usr-l0.gzOr using dump's built-in method,
setting the environment variable RSH:Using dump over ssh with RSH set&prompt.root; RSH=/usr/bin/ssh /sbin/dump -0uan -f targetuser@targetmachine.example.com:/dev/sa0tarbackup softwaretar&man.tar.1; also dates back to Version 6 of AT&T UNIX
(circa 1975). tar operates in cooperation
with the file system; tar writes files and
directories to tape. tar does not support the
full range of options that are available from &man.cpio.1;, but
tar does not require the unusual command
pipeline that cpio uses.tarMost versions of tar do not support
backups across the network. The GNU version of
tar, which FreeBSD utilizes, supports remote
devices using the same syntax as rdump. To
tar to an Exabyte tape drive connected to a
Sun called komodo, use:&prompt.root; /usr/bin/tar cf komodo:/dev/nsa8 . 2>&1For versions without
remote device support, you can use a pipeline and
rsh to send the data to a remote tape
drive.&prompt.root; tar cf - . | rsh hostname dd of=tape-device obs=20bIf you are worried about the security of backing up over a
network you should use the ssh command
instead of rsh.cpiobackup softwarecpio&man.cpio.1; is the original &unix; file interchange tape
program for magnetic media. cpio has options
(among many others) to perform byte-swapping, write a number of
different archive formats, and pipe the data to other programs.
This last feature makes cpio an excellent
choice for installation media. cpio does not
know how to walk the directory tree and a list of files must be
provided through stdin.cpiocpio does not support backups across
the network. You can use a pipeline and rsh
to send the data to a remote tape drive.&prompt.root; for f in directory_list; dofind $f >> backup.listdone
&prompt.root; cpio -v -o --format=newc < backup.list | ssh user@host "cat > backup_device"Where directory_list is the list of
directories you want to back up,
user@host is the
user/hostname combination that will be performing the backups, and
backup_device is where the backups should
be written to (e.g., /dev/nsa0).paxbackup softwarepaxpaxPOSIXIEEE&man.pax.1; is IEEE/&posix;'s answer to
tar and cpio. Over the
years the various versions of tar and
cpio have gotten slightly incompatible. So
rather than fight it out to fully standardize them, &posix;
created a new archive utility. pax attempts
to read and write many of the various cpio
and tar formats, plus new formats of its own.
Its command set more resembles cpio than
tar.Amandabackup softwareAmandaAmandaAmanda (Advanced Maryland
Network Disk Archiver) is a client/server backup system,
rather than a single program. An Amanda server will backup to
a single tape drive any number of computers that have Amanda
clients and a network connection to the Amanda server. A
common problem at sites with a number of large disks is
that the length of time required to backup to data directly to tape
exceeds the amount of time available for the task. Amanda
solves this problem. Amanda can use a holding disk to
backup several file systems at the same time. Amanda creates
archive sets: a group of tapes used over a period of time to
create full backups of all the file systems listed in Amanda's
configuration file. The archive set also contains nightly
incremental (or differential) backups of all the file systems.
Restoring a damaged file system requires the most recent full
backup and the incremental backups.The configuration file provides fine control of backups and the
network traffic that Amanda generates. Amanda will use any of the
above backup programs to write the data to tape. Amanda is available
as either a port or a package, it is not installed by default.Do NothingDo nothing is not a computer program, but it is the
most widely used backup strategy. There are no initial costs. There
is no backup schedule to follow. Just say no. If something happens
to your data, grin and bear it!If your time and your data is worth little to nothing, then
Do nothing is the most suitable backup program for your
computer. But beware, &unix; is a useful tool, you may find that within
six months you have a collection of files that are valuable to
you.Do nothing is the correct backup method for
/usr/obj and other directory trees that can be
exactly recreated by your computer. An example is the files that
comprise the HTML or &postscript; version of this Handbook.
These document formats have been created from SGML input
files. Creating backups of the HTML or &postscript; files is
not necessary. The SGML files are backed up regularly.Which Backup Program Is Best?LISA&man.dump.8; Period. Elizabeth D. Zwicky
torture tested all the backup programs discussed here. The clear
choice for preserving all your data and all the peculiarities of &unix;
file systems is dump. Elizabeth created file systems containing
a large variety of unusual conditions (and some not so unusual ones)
and tested each program by doing a backup and restore of those
file systems. The peculiarities included: files with holes, files with
holes and a block of nulls, files with funny characters in their
names, unreadable and unwritable files, devices, files that change
size during the backup, files that are created/deleted during the
backup and more. She presented the results at LISA V in Oct. 1991.
See torture-testing
Backup and Archive Programs.Emergency Restore ProcedureBefore the DisasterThere are only four steps that you need to perform in
preparation for any disaster that may occur.disklabelFirst, print the disklabel from each of your disks
(e.g. disklabel da0 | lpr), your file system table
(/etc/fstab) and all boot messages,
two copies of
each.fix-it floppiesSecond, determine that the boot and fix-it floppies
(boot.flp and fixit.flp)
have all your devices. The easiest way to check is to reboot your
machine with the boot floppy in the floppy drive and check the boot
messages. If all your devices are listed and functional, skip on to
step three.Otherwise, you have to create two custom bootable
floppies which have a kernel that can mount all of your disks
and access your tape drive. These floppies must contain:
fdisk, disklabel,
newfs, mount, and
whichever backup program you use. These programs must be
statically linked. If you use dump, the
floppy must contain restore.Third, create backup tapes regularly. Any changes that you make
after your last backup may be irretrievably lost. Write-protect the
backup tapes.Fourth, test the floppies (either boot.flp
and fixit.flp or the two custom bootable
floppies you made in step two.) and backup tapes. Make notes of the
procedure. Store these notes with the bootable floppy, the
printouts and the backup tapes. You will be so distraught when
restoring that the notes may prevent you from destroying your backup
tapes (How? In place of tar xvf /dev/sa0, you
might accidentally type tar cvf /dev/sa0 and
over-write your backup tape).For an added measure of security, make bootable floppies and two
backup tapes each time. Store one of each at a remote location. A
remote location is NOT the basement of the same office building. A
number of firms in the World Trade Center learned this lesson the
hard way. A remote location should be physically separated from
your computers and disk drives by a significant distance.A Script for Creating a Bootable Floppy /mnt/sbin/init
gzip -c -best /sbin/fsck > /mnt/sbin/fsck
gzip -c -best /sbin/mount > /mnt/sbin/mount
gzip -c -best /sbin/halt > /mnt/sbin/halt
gzip -c -best /sbin/restore > /mnt/sbin/restore
gzip -c -best /bin/sh > /mnt/bin/sh
gzip -c -best /bin/sync > /mnt/bin/sync
cp /root/.profile /mnt/root
cp -f /dev/MAKEDEV /mnt/dev
chmod 755 /mnt/dev/MAKEDEV
chmod 500 /mnt/sbin/init
chmod 555 /mnt/sbin/fsck /mnt/sbin/mount /mnt/sbin/halt
chmod 555 /mnt/bin/sh /mnt/bin/sync
chmod 6555 /mnt/sbin/restore
#
# create the devices nodes
#
cd /mnt/dev
./MAKEDEV std
./MAKEDEV da0
./MAKEDEV da1
./MAKEDEV da2
./MAKEDEV sa0
./MAKEDEV pty0
cd /
#
# create minimum file system table
#
cat > /mnt/etc/fstab < /mnt/etc/passwd < /mnt/etc/master.passwd <After the DisasterThe key question is: did your hardware survive? You have been
doing regular backups so there is no need to worry about the
software.If the hardware has been damaged, the parts should be replaced
before attempting to use the computer.If your hardware is okay, check your floppies. If you are using
a custom boot floppy, boot single-user (type -s
at the boot: prompt). Skip the following
paragraph.If you are using the boot.flp and
fixit.flp floppies, keep reading. Insert the
boot.flp floppy in the first floppy drive and
boot the computer. The original install menu will be displayed on
the screen. Select the Fixit--Repair mode with CDROM or
floppy. option. Insert the
fixit.flp when prompted.
restore and the other programs that you need are
located in /mnt2/stand.Recover each file system separately.mountroot partitiondisklabelnewfsTry to mount (e.g. mount /dev/da0a
/mnt) the root partition of your first disk. If the
disklabel was damaged, use disklabel to re-partition and
label the disk to match the label that you printed and saved. Use
newfs to re-create the file systems. Re-mount the root
partition of the floppy read-write (mount -u -o rw
/mnt). Use your backup program and backup tapes to
recover the data for this file system (e.g. restore vrf
/dev/sa0). Unmount the file system (e.g. umount
/mnt). Repeat for each file system that was
damaged.Once your system is running, backup your data onto new tapes.
Whatever caused the crash or data loss may strike again. Another
hour spent now may save you from further distress later.* I Did Not Prepare for the Disaster, What Now?
]]>
MarcFonvieilleReorganized and enhanced by Network, Memory, and File-Backed File Systemsvirtual disksdisksvirtualAside from the disks you physically insert into your computer:
floppies, CDs, hard drives, and so forth; other forms of disks
are understood by FreeBSD - the virtual
disks.NFSCodadisksmemoryThese include network file systems such as the Network File System and Coda, memory-based
file systems and
file-backed file systems.According to the FreeBSD version you run, you will have to use
different tools for creation and use of file-backed and
memory-based file systems.The FreeBSD 4.X users will have to use &man.MAKEDEV.8;
to create the required devices. FreeBSD 5.0 and later use
&man.devfs.5; to allocate device nodes transparently for the
user.File-Backed File System under FreeBSD 4.Xdisksfile-backed (4.X)The utility &man.vnconfig.8; configures and enables vnode pseudo-disk
devices. A vnode is a representation
of a file, and is the focus of file activity. This means that
&man.vnconfig.8; uses files to create and operate a
file system. One possible use is the mounting of floppy or CD
images kept in files.To use &man.vnconfig.8;, you need &man.vn.4; support in your
kernel configuration file:pseudo-device vnTo mount an existing file system image:Using vnconfig to Mount an Existing File System
Image under FreeBSD 4.X&prompt.root; vnconfig vn0diskimage
&prompt.root; mount /dev/vn0c /mntTo create a new file system image with &man.vnconfig.8;:Creating a New File-Backed Disk with vnconfig&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=newimage bs=1k count=5k
5120+0 records in
5120+0 records out
&prompt.root; vnconfig -s labels -c vn0newimage
&prompt.root; disklabel -r -w vn0 auto
&prompt.root; newfs vn0c
Warning: 2048 sector(s) in last cylinder unallocated
/dev/vn0c: 10240 sectors in 3 cylinders of 1 tracks, 4096 sectors
5.0MB in 1 cyl groups (16 c/g, 32.00MB/g, 1280 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
32
&prompt.root; mount /dev/vn0c /mnt
&prompt.root; df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/vn0c 4927 1 4532 0% /mntFile-Backed File System under FreeBSD 5.Xdisksfile-backed (5.X)The utility &man.mdconfig.8; is used to configure and enable
memory disks, &man.md.4;, under FreeBSD 5.X. To use
&man.mdconfig.8;, you have to load &man.md.4; module or to add
the support in your kernel configuration file:device mdThe &man.mdconfig.8; command supports three kinds of
memory backed virtual disks: memory disks allocated with
&man.malloc.9;, memory disks using a file or swap space as
backing. One possible use is the mounting of floppy
or CD images kept in files.To mount an existing file system image:Using mdconfig to Mount an Existing File System
Image under FreeBSD 5.X&prompt.root; mdconfig -a -t vnode -f diskimage -u 0
&prompt.root; mount /dev/md0/mntTo create a new file system image with &man.mdconfig.8;:Creating a New File-Backed Disk with mdconfig&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=newimage bs=1k count=5k
5120+0 records in
5120+0 records out
&prompt.root; mdconfig -a -t vnode -f newimage -u 0
&prompt.root; disklabel -r -w md0 auto
&prompt.root; newfs md0c
/dev/md0c: 5.0MB (10240 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
using 4 cylinder groups of 1.27MB, 81 blks, 256 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
32, 2624, 5216, 7808
&prompt.root; mount /dev/md0c /mnt
&prompt.root; df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md0c 4846 2 4458 0% /mntIf you do not specify the unit number with the
option, &man.mdconfig.8; will use the
&man.md.4; automatic allocation to select an unused device.
The name of the allocated unit will be output on stdout like
md4. For more details about
&man.mdconfig.8;, please refer to the manual page.Since &os; 5.1-RELEASE, the &man.bsdlabel.8;
utility replaces the old &man.disklabel.8; program. With
&man.bsdlabel.8; a number of obsolete options and parameters
have been retired; in the example above the option
should be removed. For more
information, please refer to the &man.bsdlabel.8;
manual page.The utility &man.mdconfig.8; is very useful, however it
asks many command lines to create a file-backed file system.
FreeBSD 5.0 also comes with a tool called &man.mdmfs.8;,
this program configures a &man.md.4; disk using
&man.mdconfig.8;, puts a UFS file system on it using
&man.newfs.8;, and mounts it using &man.mount.8;. For example,
if you want to create and mount the same file system image as
above, simply type the following:Configure and Mount a File-Backed Disk with mdmfs&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=newimage bs=1k count=5k
5120+0 records in
5120+0 records out
&prompt.root; mdmfs -F newimage -s 5m md0/mnt
&prompt.root; df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md0 4846 2 4458 0% /mntIf you use the option without unit
number, &man.mdmfs.8; will use &man.md.4; auto-unit feature to
automatically select an unused device. For more details
about &man.mdmfs.8;, please refer to the manual page.Memory-Based File System under FreeBSD 4.Xdisksmemory file system (4.X)The &man.md.4; driver is a simple, efficient means to create memory
file systems under FreeBSD 4.X. &man.malloc.9; is used
to allocate the memory.Simply take a file system you have prepared with, for
example, &man.vnconfig.8;, and:md Memory Disk under FreeBSD 4.X&prompt.root; dd if=newimage of=/dev/md0
5120+0 records in
5120+0 records out
&prompt.root; mount /dev/md0c/mnt
&prompt.root; df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md0c 4927 1 4532 0% /mntFor more details, please refer to &man.md.4; manual
page.Memory-Based File System under FreeBSD 5.Xdisksmemory file system (5.X)The same tools are used for memory-based and file-backed
file systems: &man.mdconfig.8; or &man.mdmfs.8;. The storage
for memory-based file system is allocated with
&man.malloc.9;.Creating a New Memory-Based Disk with
mdconfig&prompt.root; mdconfig -a -t malloc -s 5m -u 1
&prompt.root; newfs -U md1
/dev/md1: 5.0MB (10240 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
using 4 cylinder groups of 1.27MB, 81 blks, 256 inodes.
with soft updates
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
32, 2624, 5216, 7808
&prompt.root; mount /dev/md1/mnt
&prompt.root; df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md1 4846 2 4458 0% /mntCreating a New Memory-Based Disk with
mdmfs&prompt.root; mdmfs -M -s 5m md2/mnt
&prompt.root; df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md2 4846 2 4458 0% /mntInstead of using a &man.malloc.9; backed file system, it is
possible to use swap, for that just replace
with in the
command line of &man.mdconfig.8;. The &man.mdmfs.8; utility
by default (without ) creates a swap-based
disk. For more details, please refer to &man.mdconfig.8;
and &man.mdmfs.8; manual pages.Detaching a Memory Disk from the Systemdisksdetaching a memory diskWhen a memory-based or file-based file system
is not used, you should release all resources to the system.
The first thing to do is to unmount the file system, then use
&man.mdconfig.8; to detach the disk from the system and release
the resources.For example to detach and free all resources used by
/dev/md4:&prompt.root; mdconfig -d -u 4It is possible to list information about configured
&man.md.4; devices in using the command mdconfig
-l.For FreeBSD 4.X, &man.vnconfig.8; is used to detach
the device. For example to detach and free all resources
used by /dev/vn4:&prompt.root; vnconfig -u vn4TomRhodesContributed by File System Snapshotsfile systemssnapshotsFreeBSD 5.0 offers a new feature in conjunction with
Soft Updates: File system snapshots.Snapshots allow a user to create images of specified file
systems, and treat them as a file.
Snapshot files must be created in the file system that the
action is performed on, and a user may create no more than 20
snapshots per file system. Active snapshots are recorded
in the superblock so they are persistent across unmount and
remount operations along with system reboots. When a snapshot
is no longer required, it can be removed with the standard &man.rm.1;
command. Snapshots may be removed in any order,
however all the used space may not be acquired because another snapshot will
possibly claim some of the released blocks.During initial creation, the flag (see the &man.chflags.1; manual page)
is set to ensure that even root cannot write to the snapshot.
The &man.unlink.1; command makes an exception for snapshot files
since it allows them to be removed
with the flag set, so it is not necessary to
clear the flag before removing a snapshot file.Snapshots are created with the &man.mount.8; command. To place
a snapshot of /var in the file
/var/snapshot/snap use the following
command:&prompt.root; mount -u -o snapshot /var/snapshot/snap /varAlternatively, you can use &man.mksnap.ffs.8; to create
a snapshot:&prompt.root; mksnap_ffs /var /var/snapshot/snapOnce a snapshot has been created, it has several
uses:Some administrators will use a snapshot file for backup purposes,
because the snapshot can be transfered to CDs or tape.File integrity, &man.fsck.8; may be ran on the snapshot.
Assuming that the file system was clean when it was mounted, you
should always get a clean (and unchanging) result.
This is essentially what the
background &man.fsck.8; process does.Run the &man.dump.8; utility on the snapshot.
A dump will be returned that is consistent with the
file system and the timestamp of the snapshot. &man.dump.8;
can also take a snapshot, create a dump image and then
remove the snapshot in one command using the
flag.&man.mount.8; the snapshot as a frozen image of the file system.
To &man.mount.8; the snapshot
/var/snapshot/snap run:&prompt.root; mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /var/snapshot/snap -u 4
&prompt.root; mount -r /dev/md4 /mntYou can now walk the hierarchy of your frozen /var
file system mounted at /mnt. Everything will
be in the same state it was during the snapshot creation time.
The only exception is that any earlier snapshots will appear
as zero length files. When the use of a snapshot has delimited,
it can be unmounted with:&prompt.root; umount /mnt
&prompt.root; mdconfig -d -u 4For more information about and
file system snapshots, including technical papers, you can visit
Marshall Kirk McKusick's website at
http://www.mckusick.com.File System Quotasaccountingdisk spacedisk quotasQuotas are an optional feature of the operating system that
allow you to limit the amount of disk space and/or the number of
files a user or members of a group may allocate on a per-file
system basis. This is used most often on timesharing systems where
it is desirable to limit the amount of resources any one user or
group of users may allocate. This will prevent one user or group
of users from consuming all of the available disk space.Configuring Your System to Enable Disk QuotasBefore attempting to use disk quotas, it is necessary to make
sure that quotas are configured in your kernel. This is done by
adding the following line to your kernel configuration
file:options QUOTAThe stock GENERIC kernel does not have
this enabled by default, so you will have to configure, build and
install a custom kernel in order to use disk quotas. Please refer
to for more information on kernel
configuration.Next you will need to enable disk quotas in
/etc/rc.conf. This is done by adding the
line:enable_quotas="YES"disk quotascheckingFor finer control over your quota startup, there is an
additional configuration variable available. Normally on bootup,
the quota integrity of each file system is checked by the
&man.quotacheck.8; program. The
&man.quotacheck.8; facility insures that the data in
the quota database properly reflects the data on the file system.
This is a very time consuming process that will significantly
affect the time your system takes to boot. If you would like to
skip this step, a variable in /etc/rc.conf
is made available for the purpose:check_quotas="NO"If you are running FreeBSD prior to 3.2-RELEASE, the
configuration is simpler, and consists of only one variable. Set
the following in your /etc/rc.conf:check_quotas="YES"Finally you will need to edit /etc/fstab
to enable disk quotas on a per-file system basis. This is where
you can either enable user or group quotas or both for all of your
file systems.To enable per-user quotas on a file system, add the
option to the options field in the
/etc/fstab entry for the file system you want
to enable quotas on. For example:/dev/da1s2g /home ufs rw,userquota 1 2Similarly, to enable group quotas, use the
option instead of
. To enable both user and
group quotas, change the entry as follows:/dev/da1s2g /home ufs rw,userquota,groupquota 1 2By default, the quota files are stored in the root directory of
the file system with the names quota.user and
quota.group for user and group quotas
respectively. See &man.fstab.5; for more
information. Even though the &man.fstab.5; manual page says that
you can specify
an alternate location for the quota files, this is not recommended
because the various quota utilities do not seem to handle this
properly.At this point you should reboot your system with your new
kernel. /etc/rc will automatically run the
appropriate commands to create the initial quota files for all of
the quotas you enabled in /etc/fstab, so
there is no need to manually create any zero length quota
files.In the normal course of operations you should not be required
to run the &man.quotacheck.8;,
&man.quotaon.8;, or &man.quotaoff.8;
commands manually. However, you may want to read their manual pages
just to be familiar with their operation.Setting Quota Limitsdisk quotaslimitsOnce you have configured your system to enable quotas, verify
that they really are enabled. An easy way to do this is to
run:&prompt.root; quota -vYou should see a one line summary of disk usage and current
quota limits for each file system that quotas are enabled
on.You are now ready to start assigning quota limits with the
&man.edquota.8; command.You have several options on how to enforce limits on the
amount of disk space a user or group may allocate, and how many
files they may create. You may limit allocations based on disk
space (block quotas) or number of files (inode quotas) or a
combination of both. Each of these limits are further broken down
into two categories: hard and soft limits.hard limitA hard limit may not be exceeded. Once a user reaches his
hard limit he may not make any further allocations on the file
system in question. For example, if the user has a hard limit of
500 blocks on a file system and is currently using 490 blocks, the
user can only allocate an additional 10 blocks. Attempting to
allocate an additional 11 blocks will fail.soft limitSoft limits, on the other hand, can be exceeded for a limited
amount of time. This period of time is known as the grace period,
which is one week by default. If a user stays over his or her
soft limit longer than the grace period, the soft limit will
turn into a hard limit and no further allocations will be allowed.
When the user drops back below the soft limit, the grace period
will be reset.The following is an example of what you might see when you run
the &man.edquota.8; command. When the
&man.edquota.8; command is invoked, you are placed into
the editor specified by the EDITOR environment
variable, or in the vi editor if the
EDITOR variable is not set, to allow you to edit
the quota limits.&prompt.root; edquota -u testQuotas for user test:
/usr: blocks in use: 65, limits (soft = 50, hard = 75)
inodes in use: 7, limits (soft = 50, hard = 60)
/usr/var: blocks in use: 0, limits (soft = 50, hard = 75)
inodes in use: 0, limits (soft = 50, hard = 60)You will normally see two lines for each file system that has
quotas enabled. One line for the block limits, and one line for
inode limits. Simply change the value you want updated to modify
the quota limit. For example, to raise this user's block limit
from a soft limit of 50 and a hard limit of 75 to a soft limit of
500 and a hard limit of 600, change:/usr: blocks in use: 65, limits (soft = 50, hard = 75)to: /usr: blocks in use: 65, limits (soft = 500, hard = 600)The new quota limits will be in place when you exit the
editor.Sometimes it is desirable to set quota limits on a range of
UIDs. This can be done by use of the option
on the &man.edquota.8; command. First, assign the
desired quota limit to a user, and then run
edquota -p protouser startuid-enduid. For
example, if user test has the desired quota
limits, the following command can be used to duplicate those quota
limits for UIDs 10,000 through 19,999:&prompt.root; edquota -p test 10000-19999For more information see &man.edquota.8; manual page.Checking Quota Limits and Disk Usagedisk quotascheckingYou can use either the &man.quota.1; or the
&man.repquota.8; commands to check quota limits and
disk usage. The &man.quota.1; command can be used to
check individual user or group quotas and disk usage. A user
may only examine his own quota, and the quota of a group he
is a member of. Only the super-user may view all user and group
quotas. The
&man.repquota.8; command can be used to get a summary
of all quotas and disk usage for file systems with quotas
enabled.The following is some sample output from the
quota -v command for a user that has quota
limits on two file systems.Disk quotas for user test (uid 1002):
Filesystem blocks quota limit grace files quota limit grace
/usr 65* 50 75 5days 7 50 60
/usr/var 0 50 75 0 50 60grace periodOn the /usr file system in the above
example, this user is currently 15 blocks over the soft limit of
50 blocks and has 5 days of the grace period left. Note the
asterisk * which indicates that the user is
currently over his quota limit.Normally file systems that the user is not using any disk
space on will not show up in the output from the
&man.quota.1; command, even if he has a quota limit
assigned for that file system. The option
will display those file systems, such as the
/usr/var file system in the above
example.Quotas over NFSNFSQuotas are enforced by the quota subsystem on the NFS server.
The &man.rpc.rquotad.8; daemon makes quota information available
to the &man.quota.1; command on NFS clients, allowing users on
those machines to see their quota statistics.Enable rpc.rquotad in
/etc/inetd.conf like so:rquotad/1 dgram rpc/udp wait root /usr/libexec/rpc.rquotad rpc.rquotadNow restart inetd:&prompt.root; kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid`LuckyGreenContributed by shamrock@cypherpunks.toEncrypting Disk PartitionsdisksencryptingFreeBSD offers excellent online protections against
unauthorized data access. File permissions and Mandatory
Access Control (MAC) (see ) help prevent
unauthorized third-parties from accessing data while the operating
system is active and the computer is powered up. However,
the permissions enforced by the operating system are irrelevant if an
attacker has physical access to a computer and can simply move
the computer's hard drive to another system to copy and analyze
the sensitive data.Regardless of how an attacker may have come into possession of
a hard drive or powered-down computer, GEOM Based Disk
Encryption (gbde) can protect the data on the
computer's file systems against even highly-motivated attackers
with significant resources. Unlike cumbersome encryption methods
that encrypt only individual files, gbde
transparently encrypts entire file systems. No cleartext ever
touches the hard drive's platter.Enabling gbde in the KernelBecome rootConfiguring gbde requires
super-user privileges.&prompt.user; su -
Password:Verify the Operating System Version&man.gbde.4; requires FreeBSD 5.0 or higher.&prompt.root; uname -r
5.0-RELEASEAdd &man.gbde.4; Support to the Kernel Configuration FileUsing your favorite text editor, add the following
line to your kernel configuration file:options GEOM_BDEConfigure, recompile, and install the FreeBSD kernel.
This process is described in .Reboot into the new kernel.Preparing the Encrypted Hard DriveThe following example assumes that you are adding a new hard
drive to your system that will hold a single encrypted partition.
This partition will be mounted as /private.
gbde can also be used to encrypt
/home and /var/mail, but
this requires more complex instructions which exceed the scope of
this introduction.Add the New Hard DriveInstall the new drive to the system as explained in . For the purposes of this example,
a new hard drive partition has been added as
/dev/ad4s1c. The
/dev/ad0s1*
devices represent existing standard FreeBSD partitions on
the example system.&prompt.root; ls /dev/ad*
/dev/ad0 /dev/ad0s1b /dev/ad0s1e /dev/ad4s1
/dev/ad0s1 /dev/ad0s1c /dev/ad0s1f /dev/ad4s1c
/dev/ad0s1a /dev/ad0s1d /dev/ad4Create a Directory to Hold gbde Lock Files&prompt.root; mkdir /etc/gbdeThe gbde lock file contains
information that gbde requires to
access encrypted partitions. Without access to the lock file,
gbde will not be able to decrypt
the data contained in the encrypted partition without
significant manual intervention which is not supported by the
software. Each encrypted partition uses a separate lock
file.Initialize the gbde PartitionA gbde partition must be
initialized before it can be used. This initialization needs to
be performed only once:&prompt.root; gbde init /dev/ad4s1c -i -L /etc/gbde/ad4s1c&man.gbde.8; will open your editor, permitting you to set
various configuration options in a template. For use with UFS1
or UFS2, set the sector_size to 2048:$FreeBSD: src/sbin/gbde/template.txt,v 1.1 2002/10/20 11:16:13 phk Exp $
#
# Sector size is the smallest unit of data which can be read or written.
# Making it too small decreases performance and decreases available space.
# Making it too large may prevent filesystems from working. 512 is the
# minimum and always safe. For UFS, use the fragment size
#
sector_size = 2048
[...]
&man.gbde.8; will ask you twice to type the passphrase that
should be used to secure the data. The passphrase must be the
same both times. gbde's ability to
protect your data depends entirely on the quality of the
passphrase that you choose.
For tips on how to select a secure passphrase that is easy
to remember, see the Diceware
Passphrase website.The gbde init command creates a lock
file for your gbde partition that in
this example is stored as
/etc/gbde/ad4s1c.gbde lock files
must be backed up together with the
contents of any encrypted partitions. While deleting a lock
file alone cannot prevent a determined attacker from
decrypting a gbde partition,
without the lock file, the legitimate owner will be unable
to access the data on the encrypted partition without a
significant amount of work that is totally unsupported by
&man.gbde.8; and its designer.Attach the Encrypted Partition to the Kernel&prompt.root; gbde attach /dev/ad4s1c -l /etc/gbde/ad4s1c You will be asked to provide the passphrase that you
selected during the initialization of the encrypted partition.
The new encrypted device will show up in
/dev as
/dev/device_name.bde:&prompt.root; ls /dev/ad*
/dev/ad0 /dev/ad0s1b /dev/ad0s1e /dev/ad4s1
/dev/ad0s1 /dev/ad0s1c /dev/ad0s1f /dev/ad4s1c
/dev/ad0s1a /dev/ad0s1d /dev/ad4 /dev/ad4s1c.bdeCreate a File System on the Encrypted DeviceOnce the encrypted device has been attached to the kernel,
you can create a file system on the device. To create a file
system on the encrypted device, use &man.newfs.8;. Since it is
much faster to initialize a new UFS2 file system than it is to
initialize the old UFS1 file system, using &man.newfs.8; with
the option is recommended.The option is the default
with &os; 5.1-RELEASE and later.&prompt.root; newfs -U -O2 /dev/ad4s1c.bdeThe &man.newfs.8; command must be performed on an
attached gbde partition which
is identified by a
*.bde
extension to the device name.Mount the Encrypted PartitionCreate a mount point for the encrypted file system.&prompt.root; mkdir /privateMount the encrypted file system.&prompt.root; mount /dev/ad4s1c.bde /privateVerify That the Encrypted File System is AvailableThe encrypted file system should now be visible to
&man.df.1; and be available for use.&prompt.user; df -H
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1a 1037M 72M 883M 8% /
/devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
/dev/ad0s1f 8.1G 55K 7.5G 0% /home
/dev/ad0s1e 1037M 1.1M 953M 0% /tmp
/dev/ad0s1d 6.1G 1.9G 3.7G 35% /usr
/dev/ad4s1c.bde 150G 4.1K 138G 0% /privateMounting Existing Encrypted File SystemsAfter each boot, any encrypted file systems must be
re-attached to the kernel, checked for errors, and mounted, before
the file systems can be used. The required commands must be
executed as user root.Attach the gbde Partition to the Kernel&prompt.root; gbde attach /dev/ad4s1c -l /etc/gbde/ad4s1cYou will be asked to provide the passphrase that you
selected during initialization of the encrypted gbde
partition.Check the File System for ErrorsSince encrypted file systems cannot yet be listed in
/etc/fstab for automatic mounting, the
file systems must be checked for errors by running &man.fsck.8;
manually before mounting.&prompt.root; fsck -p -t ffs /dev/ad4s1c.bdeMount the Encrypted File System&prompt.root; mount /dev/ad4s1c.bde /privateThe encrypted file system is now available for use.Automatically Mounting Encrypted PartitionsIt is possible to create a script to automatically attach,
check, and mount an encrypted partition, but for security reasons
the script should not contain the &man.gbde.8; password. Instead,
it is recommended that such scripts be run manually while
providing the password via the console or &man.ssh.1;.Cryptographic Protections Employed by gbde&man.gbde.8; encrypts the sector payload using 128-bit AES in
CBC mode. Each sector on the disk is encrypted with a different
AES key. For more information on gbde's
cryptographic design, including how the sector keys are derived
from the user-supplied passphrase, see &man.gbde.4;.Compatibility Issues&man.sysinstall.8; is incompatible with
gbde-encrypted devices. All
*.bde devices must be detached from the
kernel before starting &man.sysinstall.8; or it will crash during
its initial probing for devices. To detach the encrypted device
used in our example, use the following command:&prompt.root; gbde detach /dev/ad4s1cAlso note that, as &man.vinum.4; does not use the
&man.geom.4; subsystem, you cannot use
gbde with
vinum volumes.