I use a ZFS array for backups. The data is first copied to this array, and later copied to tape. This post contains some information which might be useful should I need to replace one of the drives in the array.
We have 10 HDD in this system.
Two are used in a gmirror for […]

Quite some time ago, FreshPorts and The FreeBSD Diary both moved from clear text passwords to password hashes. As such, you are no longer able to recover your password. You had to email me. This is extra work for everyone. Let us automate this.
The first, step, is a table:

create table user_password_reset(
[…]

After running the 3Ware diagnostic script, the status of the array went to OK. A short time later, it reverted to this

$ sudo /usr/local/sbin/tw_cli info c0 u0

Unit UnitType Status %RCmpl %V/I/M Port Stripe Size(GB)
————————————————————————
u0 […]

I am impressed…. my gmirror array continued to work even after the drives were renamed from da20 and da24 to ada0 and ada1. This happened when I tried out the ahci(4) for my SATA drives.
It’s the type of thing I’m striving for soon in my ZFS array.
All this started when I wanted […]

In a previous post, I wrote about a suspected LIMIT problem. It turns out that suspicion proved correct. The solution was to move to a nested query which limits the underlying data and then allows the outer query to grab all the associated fluff that surrounds it.
Here is the fix to the original […]

The smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (SMART) built into most modern ATA and SCSI harddisks. In many cases, these utilities will provide advanced warning of disk degradation and failure. (The above shamelessly taken from the supplied URL).
I […]

I thought I’d run some simple tests, based on a tuning thread I found:

# dd if=/dev/urandom of=./file1 bs=1m count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes transferred in 14.283206 secs (75175127 bytes/sec)

And while the above was running:

# zpool iostat 5
capacity […]

Tonight’s goals:

Install a second HDD
get gmirror running
install the remaining 5×2TB HDD
add the two RAID cards

After adding in the second HDD for the OS, dmesg shows this:

ad4: 76319MB <seagate ST380815AS 4.AAB> at ata2-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/s
acd0: DVDR <tsstcorp CDDVDW SH-S223C/SB01> at ata3-master UDMA100 SATA 1.5Gb/s
ad8: 152587MB <wdc WD1600AAJS-75M0A0 02.03E02> at ata4-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/s

The following shows […]

Tonight I managed to:

install a DVD-RW drive
install 1x 80GB SATA drive
connect all the chassis cables to the motherboard
install the network card
install FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE
start the upgrade process to FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE
install a few ports: bash, joe, sudo

The photos from tonight.
Here is the output from /var/run/dmesg.boot

Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, […]

HAST has just been added to FreeBSD:
HAST allows to transparently store data on two physically separated machines connected over the TCP/IP network. Those two machines together will be called a cluster and each machine is one cluster node. HAST works in Primary-Secondary (Master-Backup, Master-Slave) configuration, which means that only one of the cluster nodes can […]