For future reference, this is the knew server … oh wait, I think it’s this server which is mounted in the 4U chassis mentioned in this post. It runs a few jails, including Bacula regression testing services. This recent post outlines the modifications so it boots off a mirror of SSDs. File systems Paritions zpools /var/run/dmesg.boot
I recently installed 6 SSDs into an R710. In this post, I will describe what I did to the empty SSDs before I started using them. short test I ran a short test on each one of the drives. I already had smartctl. $ sudo smartctl -t short /dev/da0 smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE-p1 amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST
R710 – getting the drives ready Read More »
NOTE: this post has been replaced by a newer version. The older post is still available This is x8dtu (named after the SuperMicro motherboard). This is the new FreshPorts server. In short: FreeBSD 11 booting off a mirrored pair of zfsroot SSDs 4.5TB of mirrored ZFS 196612 MB of RAM (yeah, that’s 196GB of RAM) SuperMicro X8TDU motherboard Intel Xeon E5620 @ 2.40GHz (two of those, giving 16 CPUs) NOTE: this post replaces
Yesterday, I upgraded a DigitalOcean droplet from FreeBSD 10.3 to FreeBSD 11.1 just before I headed to work. I’ve done such upgrades several times before. They all went well. This one did not. Several issues cascaded to prevent me from completely this task in a timely manner. Let me describe the events as they unfolded. The freebsd-update From memory, because the system is not back online as I type this, the command I
/etc/rc.subr: 1391: Syntax error: “fi”: unexpected Read More »
Yesterday I modified a server from booting off a raidz2 array, to booting off a newly created zpool. Why? Because HBAs are a pain to boot off. Instead, this server is now booting off a ZFS mirror of two SSDs, both of which are directly attached to the M/B. Today, I am upgrading this server from FreeBSD 10.3 to FreeBSD 11.1 by making use of beadm. WARNING! Not all steps of the freebsd-update
Upgrading from FreeBSD 10.3 to 11.1 via freebsd-update and beadm Read More »
I’ve been having boot issues with a server containing 20 HDD, all behind HBAs. I have decided to start booting off SSDs. In that previous blog post, there was much speculation about where to mount the new drives, etc. In the meantime, I came up with a solution which did not involve magnets and used a pair of INTEL 730 SSDs I had in another chassis. Let’s start with how I configured those
Moving boot from one zpool to another Read More »
For future reference, this is the knew server. It runs a few jails, including Bacula regression testing services. This recent post outlines the modifications so it boots off a mirror of SSDs. File systems Paritions zpools /var/run/dmesg.boot
I’m using Bacula 9.0.3 for this post, on FreeBSD 10.3 and 11.1. I did not document this as I went along, however, the details should be enough to get you started. NOTE: when I refer to the bacula-sd configuration, I mean the bacula-sd in question, not necessarily on the same server as bacula-dir. This will hopefully make you think carefully about which file you are modifying. NOTE: I am moving a whole Bacula
Bacula – ran out of space, moved some volumes to another zpool Read More »
For future reference, this is the knew server. It runs a few jails, including Bacula regression testing services. File systems Paritions zpools /var/run/dmesg.boot
This is about FreeBSD 11.1 on my knew server. I recently replaced the 3TB drives with 5TB drives. Along the way, it didn’t boot, the swap was adjusted, I got concerned about power, and there was a brief CAM status: SCSI Status Error scare. Then today, the planned reboot, I started asking questions on Reddit and on Twitter. The booting issue BIOS cannot boot from drives which present only 4096-byte sectors. This is
Booting off the new 5TB drives Read More »