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The FreeBSD Documentation Project
$FreeBSD$
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<chapter id="geom">
<chapterinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Tom</firstname>
<surname>Rhodes</surname>
<contrib>Written by </contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</chapterinfo>
<title>GEOM: Modular Disk Transformation Framework</title>
<sect1 id="geom-synopsis">
<title>Synopsis</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM Disk Framework</primary>
<see>GEOM</see>
</indexterm>
<para>This chapter covers the use of disks under the GEOM
framework in &os;. This includes the major <acronym
role="Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks">RAID</acronym>
control utilities which use the framework for configuration.
This chapter will not go into in depth discussion on how GEOM
handles or controls I/O, the underlying subsystem, or code.
This information is provided in &man.geom.4; and its various
<literal>SEE ALSO</literal> references. This chapter is also
not a definitive guide to <acronym>RAID</acronym> configurations
and only GEOM-supported <acronym>RAID</acronym> classifications
will be discussed.</para>
<para>After reading this chapter, you will know:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>What type of <acronym>RAID</acronym> support is
available through GEOM.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to use the base utilities to configure, maintain,
and manipulate the various <acronym>RAID</acronym>
levels.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to mirror, stripe, encrypt, and remotely connect
disk devices through GEOM.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to troubleshoot disks attached to the GEOM
framework.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>Before reading this chapter, you should:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Understand how &os; treats <link
linkend="disks">disk devices</link>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Know how to configure and install a new <link
linkend="kernelconfig">&os; kernel</link>.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-intro">
<title>GEOM Introduction</title>
<para>GEOM permits access and control to classes, such as Master
Boot Records and <acronym>BSD</acronym> labels, through the use
of providers, or the special files in <filename
class="directory">/dev</filename>. By supporting various
software <acronym>RAID</acronym> configurations, GEOM
transparently provides access to the operating system and
operating system utilities.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-striping">
<sect1info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Tom</firstname>
<surname>Rhodes</surname>
<contrib>Written by </contrib>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>Murray</firstname>
<surname>Stokely</surname>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</sect1info>
<title>RAID0 - Striping</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Striping</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>Striping combine several disk drives into a single volume.
In many cases, this is done through the use of hardware
controllers. The GEOM disk subsystem provides software support
for <acronym>RAID</acronym>0, also known as disk
striping.</para>
<para>In a <acronym>RAID</acronym>0 system, data is split into
blocks that get written across all the drives in the array.
Instead of having to wait on the system to write 256k to one
disk, a <acronym>RAID</acronym>0 system can simultaneously write
64k to each of four different disks, offering superior I/O
performance. This performance can be enhanced further by using
multiple disk controllers.</para>
<para>Each disk in a <acronym>RAID</acronym>0 stripe must be of
the same size, since I/O requests are interleaved to read or
write to multiple disks in parallel.</para>
<mediaobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="geom/striping" align="center"/>
</imageobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>Disk Striping Illustration</phrase>
</textobject>
</mediaobject>
<procedure>
<title>Creating a Stripe of Unformatted ATA Disks</title>
<step>
<para>Load the <filename>geom_stripe.ko</filename>
module:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>kldload geom_stripe</userinput></screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>Ensure that a suitable mount point exists. If this
volume will become a root partition, then temporarily use
another mount point such as <filename
class="directory">/mnt</filename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mkdir /mnt</userinput></screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>Determine the device names for the disks which will
be striped, and create the new stripe device. For example,
to stripe two unused and unpartitioned
<acronym>ATA</acronym> disks with device names of
<filename>/dev/ad2</filename> and
<filename>/dev/ad3</filename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gstripe label -v st0 /dev/ad2 /dev/ad3</userinput>
Metadata value stored on /dev/ad2.
Metadata value stored on /dev/ad3.
Done.</screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>Write a standard label, also known as a partition table,
on the new volume and install the default bootstrap
code:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>bsdlabel -wB /dev/stripe/st0</userinput></screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>This process should create two other devices in
<filename class="directory">/dev/stripe</filename> in
addition to <devicename>st0</devicename>. Those include
<devicename>st0a</devicename> and
<devicename>st0c</devicename>. At this point, a file system
may be created on <devicename>st0a</devicename> using
<command>newfs</command>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/stripe/st0a</userinput></screen>
<para>Many numbers will glide across the screen, and after a
few seconds, the process will be complete. The volume has
been created and is ready to be mounted.</para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para>To manually mount the created disk stripe:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/stripe/st0a /mnt</userinput></screen>
<para>To mount this striped file system automatically during the
boot process, place the volume information in
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename>. In this example, a
permanent mount point, named <filename
class="directory">stripe</filename>, is created:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mkdir /stripe</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>echo "/dev/stripe/st0a /stripe ufs rw 2 2" \</userinput>
<userinput>>> /etc/fstab</userinput></screen>
<para>The <filename>geom_stripe.ko</filename> module must also be
automatically loaded during system initialization, by adding a
line to <filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>echo 'geom_stripe_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf</userinput></screen>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-mirror">
<title>RAID1 - Mirroring</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Disk Mirroring</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>RAID1</primary>
</indexterm>
<para><acronym>RAID1</acronym>, or
<firstterm>mirroring</firstterm>, is the technique of writing
the same data to more than one disk drive. Mirrors are usually
used to guard against data loss due to drive failure. Each
drive in a mirror contains an identical copy of the data. When
an individual drive fails, the mirror continues to work,
providing data from the drives that are still functioning. The
computer keeps running, and the administrator has time to
replace the failed drive without user interruption.</para>
<para>Two common situations are illustrated in these examples.
The first creates a mirror out of two new drives and uses it
as a replacement for an existing single drive. The second
example creates a mirror on a single new drive, copies the old
drive's data to it, then inserts the old drive into the
mirror. While this procedure is slightly more complicated, it
only requires one new drive.</para>
<para>Traditionally, the two drives in a mirror are identical in
model and capacity, but &man.gmirror.8; does not require that.
Mirrors created with dissimilar drives will have a capacity
equal to that of the smallest drive in the mirror. Extra space
on larger drives will be unused. Drives inserted into the
mirror later must have at least as much capacity as the smallest
drive already in the mirror.</para>
<warning>
<para>The mirroring procedures shown here are non-destructive,
but as with any major disk operation, make a full backup
first.</para>
</warning>
<sect2 id="geom-mirror-metadata">
<title>Metadata Issues</title>
<para>Many disk systems store metadata at the end of each disk.
Old metadata should be erased before reusing the disk for a
mirror. Most problems are caused by two particular types of
leftover metadata: GPT partition tables, and old
&man.gmirror.8; metadata from a previous mirror.</para>
<para>GPT metadata can be erased with &man.gpart.8;. This
example erases both primary and backup GPT partition tables
from disk <devicename>ada8</devicename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart destroy -F ada8</userinput></screen>
<para>&man.gmirror.8; can remove a disk from an active mirror
and erase the metadata in one step. Here, the example disk
<devicename>ada8</devicename> is removed from the active
mirror <devicename>gm4</devicename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror remove gm4 ada8</userinput></screen>
<para>If the mirror is not running but old mirror metadata is
still on the disk, use <command>gmirror clear</command> to
remove it:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror clear ada8</userinput></screen>
<para>&man.gmirror.8; stores one block of metadata at the end of
the disk. Because GPT partition schemes also store metadata
at the end of the disk, mirroring full GPT disks with
&man.gmirror.8; is not recommended. MBR partitioning is used
here because it only stores a partition table at the start of
the disk and does not conflict with &man.gmirror.8;.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="geom-mirror-two-new-disks">
<title>Creating a Mirror with Two New Disks</title>
<para>In this example, &os; has already been installed on a
single disk, <devicename>ada0</devicename>. Two new disks,
<devicename>ada1</devicename> and
<devicename>ada2</devicename>, have been connected to the
system. A new mirror will be created on these two disks and
used to replace the old single disk.</para>
<para>&man.gmirror.8; requires a kernel module,
<filename>geom_mirror.ko</filename>, either built into the
kernel or loaded at boot- or run-time. Manually load the
kernel module now:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror load</userinput></screen>
<para>Create the mirror with the two new drives:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror label -v gm0 /dev/ada1 /dev/ada2</userinput></screen>
<para><devicename>gm0</devicename> is a user-chosen device name
assigned to the new mirror. After the mirror has been
started, this device name will appear in
<filename>/dev/mirror/</filename>.</para>
<para>MBR and bsdlabel partition tables can now be created on
the mirror with &man.gpart.8;. Here we show a traditional
split-filesystem layout, with partitions for
<filename>/</filename>, swap, <filename>/var</filename>,
<filename>/tmp</filename>, and <filename>/usr</filename>. A
single <filename>/</filename> filesystem and a swap partition
will also work.</para>
<para>Partitions on the mirror do not have to be the same size
as those on the existing disk, but they must be large enough
to hold all the data already present on
<devicename>ada0</devicename>.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart create -s MBR mirror/gm0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd -a 4k mirror/gm0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart show mirror/gm0</userinput>
=> 63 156301423 mirror/gm0 MBR (74G)
63 63 - free - (31k)
126 156301299 1 freebsd (74G)
156301425 61 - free - (30k)</screen>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart create -s BSD mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k -s 2g mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd-swap -a 4k -s 4g mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k -s 2g mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k -s 1g mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart show mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
=> 0 156301299 mirror/gm0s1 BSD (74G)
0 2 - free - (1.0k)
2 4194304 1 freebsd-ufs (2.0G)
4194306 8388608 2 freebsd-swap (4.0G)
12582914 4194304 4 freebsd-ufs (2.0G)
16777218 2097152 5 freebsd-ufs (1.0G)
18874370 137426928 6 freebsd-ufs (65G)
156301298 1 - free - (512B)</screen>
<para>Make the mirror bootable by installing bootcode in the MBR
and bsdlabel and setting the active slice:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr mirror/gm0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart set -a active -i 1 mirror/gm0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot mirror/gm0s1</userinput></screen>
<para>Format the filesystems on the new mirror, enabling
soft-updates.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1a</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1d</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1e</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1f</userinput></screen>
<para>Filesystems from the original
<devicename>ada0</devicename> disk can now be copied onto the
mirror with &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8;.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1a /mnt</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - / | (cd /mnt && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1d /mnt/var</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1e /mnt/tmp</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1f /mnt/usr</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /var | (cd /mnt/var && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /tmp | (cd /mnt/tmp && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /usr | (cd /mnt/usr && restore -rf -)</userinput></screen>
<para><filename>/mnt/etc/fstab</filename> must be edited to
point to the new mirror filesystems:</para>
<programlisting># Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass#
/dev/mirror/gm0s1a / ufs rw 1 1
/dev/mirror/gm0s1b none swap sw 0 0
/dev/mirror/gm0s1d /var ufs rw 2 2
/dev/mirror/gm0s1e /tmp ufs rw 2 2
/dev/mirror/gm0s1f /usr ufs rw 2 2</programlisting>
<para>If the &man.gmirror.8; kernel module has not been built
into the kernel, <filename>/mnt/boot/loader.conf</filename> is
edited to load the module at boot:</para>
<programlisting>geom_mirror_load="YES"</programlisting>
<para>Reboot the system to test the new mirror and verify that
all data has been copied. The BIOS will see the mirror as two
individual drives rather than a mirror. Because the drives
are identical, it does not matter which is selected to
boot.</para>
<para>See the <link
linkend="gmirror-troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</link>
section if there are problems booting. Powering down and
disconnecting the original <devicename>ada0</devicename> disk
will allow it to be kept as an offline backup.</para>
<para>In use, the mirror will behave just like the original
single drive.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="geom-mirror-existing-drive">
<title>Creating a Mirror with an Existing Drive</title>
<para>In this example, &os; has already been installed on a
single disk, <devicename>ada0</devicename>. A new disk,
<devicename>ada1</devicename>, has been connected to the
system. A one-disk mirror will be created on the new disk,
the existing system copied onto it, and then the old disk will
be inserted into the mirror. This slightly complex procedure
is required because &man.gmirror.8; needs to put a 512-byte
block of metadata at the end of each disk, and the existing
<devicename>ada0</devicename> has usually had all of its space
already allocated.</para>
<para>Load the &man.gmirror.8; kernel module:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror load</userinput></screen>
<para>Check the media size of the original disk with
&man.diskinfo.8;:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>diskinfo -v ada0 | head -n3</userinput>
/dev/ada0
512 # sectorsize
1000204821504 # mediasize in bytes (931G)</screen>
<para>Create a mirror on the new disk. To make certain that the
mirror capacity is not any larger than the original drive,
&man.gnop.8; is used to create a fake drive of the exact same
size. This drive does not store any data, but is used only to
limit the size of the mirror. When &man.gmirror.8; creates
the mirror, it will restrict the capacity to the size of
<devicename>gzero.nop</devicename>, even if the new drive
(<devicename>ada1</devicename>) has more space. Note that the
<replaceable>1000204821504</replaceable> in the second line
should be equal to <devicename>ada0</devicename>'s media size
as shown by &man.diskinfo.8; above.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>geom zero load</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gnop create -s 1000204821504 gzero</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror label -v gm0 gzero.nop ada1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror forget gm0</userinput></screen>
<para><devicename>gzero.nop</devicename> does not store any
data, so the mirror does not see it as connected. The mirror
is told to <quote>forget</quote> unconnected components,
removing references to <devicename>gzero.nop</devicename>.
The result is a mirror device containing only a single disk,
<devicename>ada1</devicename>.</para>
<para>After creating <devicename>gm0</devicename>, view the
partition table on <devicename>ada0</devicename>.</para>
<para>This output is from a 1 TB drive. If there is some
unallocated space at the end of the drive, the contents may be
copied directly from <devicename>ada0</devicename> to the new
mirror.</para>
<para>However, if the output shows that all of the space on the
disk is allocated like the following listing, there is no
space available for the 512-byte &man.gmirror.8; metadata at
the end of the disk.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart show ada0</userinput>
=> 63 1953525105 ada0 MBR (931G)
63 1953525105 1 freebsd [active] (931G)</screen>
<para>In this case, the partition table must be edited to reduce
the capacity by one sector on
<devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename>. The procedure will
be explained later.</para>
<para>In either case, partition tables on the primary disk
should be copied first with the &man.gpart.8;
<command>backup</command> and <command>restore</command>
subcommands.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart backup ada0 > table.ada0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart backup ada0s1 > table.ada0s1</userinput></screen>
<para>These commands create two files,
<filename>table.ada0</filename> and
<filename>table.ada0s1</filename>. This example is from a
1 TB drive:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cat table.ada0</userinput>
MBR 4
1 freebsd 63 1953525105 [active]</screen>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cat table.ada0s1</userinput>
BSD 8
1 freebsd-ufs 0 4194304
2 freebsd-swap 4194304 33554432
4 freebsd-ufs 37748736 50331648
5 freebsd-ufs 88080384 41943040
6 freebsd-ufs 130023424 838860800
7 freebsd-ufs 968884224 984640881</screen>
<para>If the output of <command>gpart show</command> shows no
free space at the end of the disk, the size of both the slice
and the last partition must be reduced by one sector. Edit
the two files, reducing the size of both the slice and last
partition by one. These are the last numbers in each
listing.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cat table.ada0</userinput>
MBR 4
1 freebsd 63 <emphasis>1953525104</emphasis> [active]</screen>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cat table.ada0s1</userinput>
BSD 8
1 freebsd-ufs 0 4194304
2 freebsd-swap 4194304 33554432
4 freebsd-ufs 37748736 50331648
5 freebsd-ufs 88080384 41943040
6 freebsd-ufs 130023424 838860800
7 freebsd-ufs 968884224 <emphasis>984640880</emphasis></screen>
<para>If at least one sector was unallocated at the end of the
disk, these two files can be used without modification.</para>
<para>Now restore the partition table into
<devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart restore mirror/gm0 < table.ada0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart restore mirror/gm0s1 < table.ada0s1</userinput></screen>
<para>Check the partition table with
<command>gpart show</command>. This example has
<devicename>gm0s1a</devicename> for <filename>/</filename>,
<devicename>gm0s1d</devicename> for <filename>/var</filename>,
<devicename>gm0s1e</devicename> for <filename>/usr</filename>,
<devicename>gm0s1f</devicename> for
<filename>/data1</filename>, and
<devicename>gm0s1g</devicename> for
<filename>/data2</filename>.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart show mirror/gm0</userinput>
=> 63 1953525104 mirror/gm0 MBR (931G)
63 1953525042 1 freebsd [active] (931G)
1953525105 62 - free - (31k)
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart show mirror/gm0s1</userinput>
=> 0 1953525042 mirror/gm0s1 BSD (931G)
0 2097152 1 freebsd-ufs (1.0G)
2097152 16777216 2 freebsd-swap (8.0G)
18874368 41943040 4 freebsd-ufs (20G)
60817408 20971520 5 freebsd-ufs (10G)
81788928 629145600 6 freebsd-ufs (300G)
710934528 1242590514 7 freebsd-ufs (592G)
1953525042 63 - free - (31k)</screen>
<para>Both the slice and the last partition should have some
free space at the end of each disk.</para>
<para>Create filesystems on these new partitions. The
number of partitions will vary, matching the partitions on the
original disk, <devicename>ada0</devicename>.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1a</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1d</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1e</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1f</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -U /dev/mirror/gm0s1g</userinput></screen>
<para>Make the mirror bootable by installing bootcode in the MBR
and bsdlabel and setting the active slice:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr mirror/gm0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart set -a active -i 1 mirror/gm0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot mirror/gm0s1</userinput></screen>
<para>Adjust <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> to use the
new partitions on the mirror. Back up this file first by
copying it to <filename>/etc/fstab.orig</filename>.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig</userinput></screen>
<para>Edit <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>, replacing
<devicename>/dev/ada0</devicename> with
<devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename>.</para>
<programlisting># Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass#
/dev/mirror/gm0s1a / ufs rw 1 1
/dev/mirror/gm0s1b none swap sw 0 0
/dev/mirror/gm0s1d /var ufs rw 2 2
/dev/mirror/gm0s1e /usr ufs rw 2 2
/dev/mirror/gm0s1f /data1 ufs rw 2 2
/dev/mirror/gm0s1g /data2 ufs rw 2 2</programlisting>
<para>If the &man.gmirror.8; kernel module has not been built
into the kernel, edit <filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename>
to load it:</para>
<programlisting>geom_mirror_load="YES"</programlisting>
<para>Filesystems from the original disk can now be copied onto
the mirror with &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8;. Note that
it may take some time to create a snapshot for each filesystem
dumped with <command>dump -L</command>.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1a /mnt</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - / | (cd /mnt && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1d /mnt/var</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1e /mnt/usr</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1f /mnt/data1</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1g /mnt/data2</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /usr | (cd /mnt/usr && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /var | (cd /mnt/var && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /data1 | (cd /mnt/data1 && restore -rf -)</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>dump -C16 -b64 -0aL -f - /data2 | (cd /mnt/data2 && restore -rf -)</userinput></screen>
<para>Restart the system, booting from
<devicename>ada1</devicename>. If everything is working, the
system will boot from <devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename>,
which now contains the same data as
<devicename>ada0</devicename> had previously. See the
<link linkend="gmirror-troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</link>
section if there are problems booting.</para>
<para>At this point, the mirror still consists of only the
single <devicename>ada1</devicename> disk.</para>
<para>After booting from <devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename>
successfully, the final step is inserting
<devicename>ada0</devicename> into the mirror.</para>
<important>
<para>When <devicename>ada0</devicename> is inserted into the
mirror, its former contents will be overwritten by data on
the mirror. Make certain that
<devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename> has the same contents as
<devicename>ada0</devicename> before adding
<devicename>ada0</devicename> to the mirror. If there is
something wrong with the contents copied by &man.dump.8; and
&man.restore.8;, revert <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> to
mount the filesystems on <devicename>ada0</devicename>,
reboot, and try the whole procedure again.</para>
</important>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror insert gm0 ada0</userinput>
GEOM_MIRROR: Device gm0: rebuilding provider ada0</screen>
<para>Synchronization between the two disks will start
immediately. &man.gmirror.8; <command>status</command>
shows the progress.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror status</userinput>
Name Status Components
mirror/gm0 DEGRADED ada1 (ACTIVE)
ada0 (SYNCHRONIZING, 64%)</screen>
<para>After a while, synchronization will finish.</para>
<screen>GEOM_MIRROR: Device gm0: rebuilding provider ada0 finished.
&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror status</userinput>
Name Status Components
mirror/gm0 COMPLETE ada1 (ACTIVE)
ada0 (ACTIVE)</screen>
<para><devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename> now consists of
the two disks <devicename>ada0</devicename> and
<devicename>ada1</devicename>, and the contents are
automatically synchronized with each other. In use,
<devicename>mirror/gm0</devicename> will behave just like the
original single drive.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="gmirror-troubleshooting">
<title>Troubleshooting</title>
<sect3>
<title>Problems with Booting</title>
<sect4>
<title>BIOS Settings</title>
<para>BIOS settings may have to be changed to boot from one
of the new mirrored drives. Either mirror drive can be
used for booting, as they contain identical data.</para>
</sect4>
<sect4>
<title>Boot Problems</title>
<para>If the boot stopped with this message, something is
wrong with the mirror device:</para>
<screen>Mounting from ufs:/dev/mirror/gm0s1a failed with error 19.
Loader variables:
vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/mirror/gm0s1a
vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw
Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device> [options]
Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
and with the specified (optional) option list.
eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
zfs:tank
cd9660:/dev/acd0 ro
(which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/acd0 /)
? List valid disk boot devices
. Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
<empty line> Abort manual input
mountroot></screen>
<para>Forgetting to load the
<filename>geom_mirror</filename> module in
<filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename> can cause this
problem. To fix it, boot from a &os; 9.0 or later
installation media and choose <literal>Shell</literal> at
the first prompt. Then load the mirror module and mount
the mirror device:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror load</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1a /mnt</userinput></screen>
<para>Edit <filename>/mnt/boot/loader.conf</filename>,
adding a line to load the mirror module:</para>
<programlisting>geom_mirror_load="YES"</programlisting>
<para>Save the file and reboot.</para>
<para>Other problems that cause <literal>error 19</literal>
require more effort to fix. Enter
<literal>ufs:/dev/ada0s1a</literal> at the boot loader
prompt. Although the system should boot from
<devicename>ada0</devicename>, another prompt to select a
shell appears because <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> is
incorrect. Press the Enter key at the prompt. Undo the
modifications so far by reverting
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename>, mounting filesystems from
the original disk (<devicename>ada0</devicename>) instead
of the mirror. Reboot the system and try the procedure
again.</para>
<screen>Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:
&prompt.root; <userinput>cp /etc/fstab.orig /etc/fstab</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>reboot</userinput></screen>
</sect4>
</sect3>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Recovering from Disk Failure</title>
<para>The benefit of disk mirroring is that an individual disk
can fail without causing the mirror to lose any data. In the
above example, if <devicename>ada0</devicename> fails, the
mirror will continue to work, providing data from the
remaining working drive, <devicename>ada1</devicename>.</para>
<para>To replace the failed drive, shut down the system and
physically replace the failed drive with a new drive of equal
or greater capacity. Manufacturers use somewhat arbitrary
values when rating drives in gigabytes, and the only way to
really be sure is to compare the total count of sectors shown
by <command>diskinfo -v</command>. A drive with larger
capacity than the mirror will work, although the extra space
on the new drive will not be used.</para>
<para>After the computer is powered back up, the mirror will be
running in a <quote>degraded</quote> mode with only one drive.
The mirror is told to forget drives that are not currently
connected:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror forget gm0</userinput></screen>
<para>Any old metadata should be <link
linkend="geom-mirror-metadata">cleared from the replacement
disk</link>. Then the disk, <devicename>ada4</devicename>
for this example, is inserted into the mirror:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gmirror insert gm0 /dev/ada4</userinput></screen>
<para>Resynchronization begins when the new drive is inserted
into the mirror. This process of copying mirror data to a new
drive can take a while. Performance of the mirror will be
greatly reduced during the copy, so inserting new drives is
best done when there is low demand on the computer.</para>
<para>Progress can be monitored with <command>gmirror
status</command>, which shows drives that are being
synchronized and the percentage of completion. During
resynchronization, the status will be
<computeroutput>DEGRADED</computeroutput>, changing to
<computeroutput>COMPLETE</computeroutput> when the process is
finished.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-raid3">
<sect1info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Mark</firstname>
<surname>Gladman</surname>
<contrib>Written by </contrib>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>Daniel</firstname>
<surname>Gerzo</surname>
</author>
</authorgroup>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Tom</firstname>
<surname>Rhodes</surname>
<contrib>Based on documentation by </contrib>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>Murray</firstname>
<surname>Stokely</surname>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</sect1info>
<title><acronym>RAID</acronym>3 - Byte-level Striping with
Dedicated Parity</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>RAID3</primary>
</indexterm>
<para><acronym>RAID</acronym>3 is a method used to combine several
disk drives into a single volume with a dedicated parity disk.
In a <acronym>RAID</acronym>3 system, data is split up into a
number of bytes that are written across all the drives in the
array except for one disk which acts as a dedicated parity disk.
This means that reading 1024KB from a
<acronym>RAID</acronym>3 implementation will access all disks in
the array. Performance can be enhanced by using multiple disk
controllers. The <acronym>RAID</acronym>3 array provides a
fault tolerance of 1 drive, while providing a capacity of 1 -
1/n times the total capacity of all drives in the array, where n
is the number of hard drives in the array. Such a configuration
is mostly suitable for storing data of larger sizes such as
multimedia files.</para>
<para>At least 3 physical hard drives are required to build a
<acronym>RAID</acronym>3 array. Each disk must be of the same
size, since I/O requests are interleaved to read or write to
multiple disks in parallel. Also, due to the nature of
<acronym>RAID</acronym>3, the number of drives must be
equal to 3, 5, 9, 17, and so on, or 2^n + 1.</para>
<sect2>
<title>Creating a Dedicated <acronym>RAID</acronym>3
Array</title>
<para>In &os;, support for <acronym>RAID</acronym>3 is
implemented by the &man.graid3.8; <acronym>GEOM</acronym>
class. Creating a dedicated
<acronym>RAID</acronym>3 array on &os; requires the following
steps.</para>
<note>
<para>While it is theoretically possible to boot from a
<acronym>RAID</acronym>3 array on &os;, that configuration
is uncommon and is not advised.</para>
</note>
<procedure>
<step>
<para>First, load the <filename>geom_raid3.ko</filename>
kernel module by issuing the following command:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>graid3 load</userinput></screen>
<para>Alternatively, it is possible to manually load the
<filename>geom_raid3.ko</filename> module:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>kldload geom_raid3.ko</userinput></screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>Create or ensure that a suitable mount point
exists:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mkdir <replaceable>/multimedia/</replaceable></userinput></screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>Determine the device names for the disks which will be
added to the array, and create the new
<acronym>RAID</acronym>3 device. The final device listed
will act as the dedicated parity disk. This
example uses three unpartitioned
<acronym>ATA</acronym> drives:
<devicename><replaceable>ada1</replaceable></devicename>
and
<devicename><replaceable>ada2</replaceable></devicename>
for data, and
<devicename><replaceable>ada3</replaceable></devicename>
for parity.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>graid3 label -v gr0 /dev/ada1 /dev/ada2 /dev/ada3</userinput>
Metadata value stored on /dev/ada1.
Metadata value stored on /dev/ada2.
Metadata value stored on /dev/ada3.
Done.</screen>
</step>
<step>
<para>Partition the newly created
<devicename>gr0</devicename> device and put a UFS file
system on it:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart create -s GPT /dev/raid3/gr0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gpart add -t freebsd-ufs /dev/raid3/gr0</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -j /dev/raid3/gr0p1</userinput></screen>
<para>Many numbers will glide across the screen, and after a
bit of time, the process will be complete. The volume has
been created and is ready to be mounted:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/raid3/gr0p1 /multimedia/</userinput></screen>
<para>The <acronym>RAID</acronym>3 array is now ready to
use.</para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para>Additional configuration is needed to retain the above
setup across system reboots.</para>
<procedure>
<step>
<para>The <filename>geom_raid3.ko</filename> module must be
loaded before the array can be mounted. To automatically
load the kernel module during system initialization, add
the following line to
<filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename>:</para>
<programlisting>geom_raid3_load="YES"</programlisting>
</step>
<step>
<para>The following volume information must be added to
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename> in order to
automatically mount the array's file system during
the system boot process:</para>
<programlisting>/dev/raid3/gr0p1 /multimedia ufs rw 2 2</programlisting>
</step>
</procedure>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-ggate">
<title>GEOM Gate Network Devices</title>
<para>GEOM supports the remote use of devices, such as disks,
CD-ROMs, and files through the use of the gate utilities.
This is similar to <acronym>NFS</acronym>.</para>
<para>To begin, an exports file must be created. This file
specifies who is permitted to access the exported resources and
what level of access they are offered. For example, to export
the fourth slice on the first <acronym>SCSI</acronym> disk, the
following <filename>/etc/gg.exports</filename> is more than
adequate:</para>
<programlisting>192.168.1.0/24 RW /dev/da0s4d</programlisting>
<para>This allows all hosts inside the specified private network
access to the file system on the <devicename>da0s4d</devicename>
partition.</para>
<para>To export this device, ensure it is not currently mounted,
and start the &man.ggated.8; server daemon:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>ggated</userinput></screen>
<para>To <command>mount</command> the device on the client
machine, issue the following commands:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>ggatec create -o rw 192.168.1.1 /dev/da0s4d</userinput>
ggate0
&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/ggate0 /mnt</userinput></screen>
<para>The device may now be accessed through the <filename
class="directory">/mnt</filename> mount point.</para>
<note>
<para>However, this will fail if the device is currently mounted
on either the server machine or any other machine on the
network.</para>
</note>
<para>When the device is no longer needed, unmount it with
&man.umount.8;, similar to any other disk device.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-glabel">
<title>Labeling Disk Devices</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Disk Labels</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>During system initialization, the &os; kernel creates
device nodes as devices are found. This method of probing for
devices raises some issues. For instance, what if a new disk
device is added via <acronym>USB</acronym>? It is likely that
a flash device may be handed the device name of
<devicename>da0</devicename> and the original
<devicename>da0</devicename> shifted to
<devicename>da1</devicename>. This will cause issues mounting
file systems if they are listed in
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename> which may also prevent the
system from booting.</para>
<para>One solution is to chain <acronym>SCSI</acronym> devices
in order so a new device added to the <acronym>SCSI</acronym>
card will be issued unused device numbers. But what about
<acronym>USB</acronym> devices which may replace the primary
<acronym>SCSI</acronym> disk? This happens because
<acronym>USB</acronym> devices are usually probed before the
<acronym>SCSI</acronym> card. One solution is to only insert
these devices after the system has been booted. Another method
is to use only a single <acronym>ATA</acronym> drive and never
list the <acronym>SCSI</acronym> devices in
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename>.</para>
<para>A better solution is to use <command>glabel</command> to
label the disk devices and use the labels in
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename>. Because
<command>glabel</command> stores the label in the last sector of
a given provider, the label will remain persistent across
reboots. By using this label as a device, the file system may
always be mounted regardless of what device node it is accessed
through.</para>
<note>
<para><command>glabel</command> can create both transient and
permanent labels. Only permanent labels are consistent across
reboots. Refer to &man.glabel.8; for more information on the
differences between labels.</para>
</note>
<sect2>
<title>Label Types and Examples</title>
<para>Permanent labels can be a generic or a file system label.
Permanent file system labels can be created with
&man.tunefs.8; or &man.newfs.8;. These types of labels are
created in a sub-directory of <filename
class="directory">/dev</filename>, and will be named
according to the file system type. For example,
<acronym>UFS</acronym>2 file system labels will be created in
<filename class="directory">/dev/ufs</filename>. Generic
permanent labels can be created with <command>glabel
label</command>. These are not file system specific and
will be created in <filename
class="directory">/dev/label</filename>.</para>
<para>Temporary labels are destroyed at the next reboot. These
labels are created in <filename
class="directory">/dev/label</filename> and are suited to
experimentation. A temporary label can be created using
<command>glabel create</command>.</para>
<!-- XXXTR: How do you create a file system label without running newfs
or when there is no newfs (e.g.: cd9660)? -->
<para>To create a permanent label for a
<acronym>UFS</acronym>2 file system without destroying any
data, issue the following command:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>tunefs -L <replaceable>home</replaceable> <replaceable>/dev/da3</replaceable></userinput></screen>
<warning>
<para>If the file system is full, this may cause data
corruption.</para>
</warning>
<para>A label should now exist in <filename
class="directory">/dev/ufs</filename> which may be added
to <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>:</para>
<programlisting>/dev/ufs/home /home ufs rw 2 2</programlisting>
<note>
<para>The file system must not be mounted while attempting
to run <command>tunefs</command>.</para>
</note>
<para>Now the file system may be mounted:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /home</userinput></screen>
<para>From this point on, so long as the
<filename>geom_label.ko</filename> kernel module is loaded at
boot with <filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename> or the
<literal>GEOM_LABEL</literal> kernel option is present,
the device node may change without any ill effect on the
system.</para>
<para>File systems may also be created with a default label
by using the <option>-L</option> flag with
<command>newfs</command>. Refer to &man.newfs.8; for
more information.</para>
<para>The following command can be used to destroy the
label:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>glabel destroy home</userinput></screen>
<para>The following example shows how to label the partitions of
a boot disk.</para>
<example>
<title>Labeling Partitions on the Boot Disk</title>
<para>By permanently labeling the partitions on the boot disk,
the system should be able to continue to boot normally, even
if the disk is moved to another controller or transferred to
a different system. For this example, it is assumed that a
single <acronym>ATA</acronym> disk is used, which is
currently recognized by the system as
<devicename>ad0</devicename>. It is also assumed that the
standard &os; partition scheme is used, with
<filename class="directory">/</filename>,
<filename class="directory">/var</filename>,
<filename class="directory">/usr</filename> and
<filename class="directory">/tmp</filename>, as
well as a swap partition.</para>
<para>Reboot the system, and at the &man.loader.8; prompt,
press <keycap>4</keycap> to boot into single user mode.
Then enter the following commands:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>glabel label rootfs /dev/ad0s1a</userinput>
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider /dev/ad0s1a is label/rootfs
&prompt.root; <userinput>glabel label var /dev/ad0s1d</userinput>
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider /dev/ad0s1d is label/var
&prompt.root; <userinput>glabel label usr /dev/ad0s1f</userinput>
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider /dev/ad0s1f is label/usr
&prompt.root; <userinput>glabel label tmp /dev/ad0s1e</userinput>
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider /dev/ad0s1e is label/tmp
&prompt.root; <userinput>glabel label swap /dev/ad0s1b</userinput>
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider /dev/ad0s1b is label/swap
&prompt.root; <userinput>exit</userinput></screen>
<para>The system will continue with multi-user boot. After
the boot completes, edit <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> and
replace the conventional device names, with their respective
labels. The final <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> will
look like this:</para>
<programlisting># Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass#
/dev/label/swap none swap sw 0 0
/dev/label/rootfs / ufs rw 1 1
/dev/label/tmp /tmp ufs rw 2 2
/dev/label/usr /usr ufs rw 2 2
/dev/label/var /var ufs rw 2 2</programlisting>
<para>The system can now be rebooted. If everything went
well, it will come up normally and <command>mount</command>
will show:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount</userinput>
/dev/label/rootfs on / (ufs, local)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local)
/dev/label/tmp on /tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/label/usr on /usr (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/label/var on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates)</screen>
</example>
<para>Starting with &os; 7.2, the &man.glabel.8; class
supports a new label type for <acronym>UFS</acronym> file
systems, based on the unique file system id,
<literal>ufsid</literal>. These labels may be found in
<filename class="directory">/dev/ufsid</filename> and are
created automatically during system startup. It is possible
to use <literal>ufsid</literal> labels to mount partitions
using <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>. Use <command>glabel
status</command> to receive a list of file systems and their
corresponding <literal>ufsid</literal> labels:</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>glabel status</userinput>
Name Status Components
ufsid/486b6fc38d330916 N/A ad4s1d
ufsid/486b6fc16926168e N/A ad4s1f</screen>
<para>In the above example, <devicename>ad4s1d</devicename>
represents <filename class="directory">/var</filename>,
while <devicename>ad4s1f</devicename> represents
<filename class="directory">/usr</filename>.
Using the <literal>ufsid</literal> values shown, these
partitions may now be mounted with the following entries in
<filename>/etc/fstab</filename>:</para>
<programlisting>/dev/ufsid/486b6fc38d330916 /var ufs rw 2 2
/dev/ufsid/486b6fc16926168e /usr ufs rw 2 2</programlisting>
<para>Any partitions with <literal>ufsid</literal> labels can be
mounted in this way, eliminating the need to manually create
permanent labels, while still enjoying the benefits of device
name independent mounting.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="geom-gjournal">
<title>UFS Journaling Through GEOM</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>GEOM</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Journaling</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>Beginning with &os; 7.0, support for UFS journals is
available. The implementation is provided through the
<acronym>GEOM</acronym> subsystem and is configured using
&man.gjournal.8;.</para>
<para>Journaling stores a log of file system transactions, such as
changes that make up a complete disk write operation, before
meta-data and file writes are committed to the disk. This
transaction log can later be replayed to redo file system
transactions, preventing file system inconsistencies.</para>
<para>This method provides another mechanism to protect against
data loss and inconsistencies of the file system. Unlike Soft
Updates, which tracks and enforces meta-data updates, and
snapshots, which create an image of the file system, a log is
stored in disk space specifically for this task, and in
some cases, may be stored on another disk entirely.</para>
<para>Unlike other file system journaling implementations, the
<command>gjournal</command> method is block based and not
implemented as part of the file system. It is a
<acronym>GEOM</acronym> extension.</para>
<para>To enable support for <command>gjournal</command>, the
&os; kernel must have the following option which is the
default on &os; 7.0 and later:</para>
<programlisting>options UFS_GJOURNAL</programlisting>
<para>If journaled volumes need to be mounted during startup, the
<filename>geom_journal.ko</filename> kernel module needs to be
loaded, by adding the following line to
<filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename>:</para>
<programlisting>geom_journal_load="YES"</programlisting>
<para>Alternatively, this function can be built into a custom
kernel, by adding the following line in the kernel configuration
file:</para>
<programlisting>options GEOM_JOURNAL</programlisting>
<para>Creating a journal on a free file system may now be done
using the following steps. In this example,
<devicename>da4</devicename> is a new <acronym>SCSI</acronym>
disk:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>gjournal load</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>gjournal label /dev/da4</userinput></screen>
<para>At this point, there should be a
<devicename>/dev/da4</devicename> device node and a
<devicename>/dev/da4.journal</devicename> device node.
A file system may now be created on this device:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>newfs -O 2 -J /dev/da4.journal</userinput></screen>
<para>This command will create a <acronym>UFS</acronym>2 file
system on the journaled device.</para>
<para><command>mount</command> the device at the desired point
with:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>mount /dev/da4.journal <replaceable>/mnt</replaceable></userinput></screen>
<note>
<para>In the case of several slices, a journal will be created
for each individual slice. For instance, if
<devicename>ad4s1</devicename> and
<devicename>ad4s2</devicename> are both slices, then
<command>gjournal</command> will create
<devicename>ad4s1.journal</devicename> and
<devicename>ad4s2.journal</devicename>.</para>
</note>
<para>For better performance, the journal may be kept on another
disk. In this configuration, the journal provider or storage
device should be listed after the device to enable journaling
on. Journaling may also be enabled on current file systems by
using <command>tunefs</command>. However,
<emphasis>always</emphasis> make a backup before attempting to
alter a file system. In most cases, <command>gjournal</command>
will fail if it is unable to create the journal, but this does
not protect against data loss incurred as a result of misusing
<command>tunefs</command>.</para>
<para>It is also possible to journal the boot disk of a &os;
system. Refer to the article <ulink
url="&url.articles.gjournal-desktop;">Implementing UFS
Journaling on a Desktop PC</ulink> for detailed
instructions.</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>