This will detail how to set up FreeBSD 8.1 (amd64) over 3 hard drives. The system itself is on a partition that's mirrored (using gmirror) twice so any of the drives can be used to boot the system. Swap is distributed across all three drives for efficiency. The majority of the space is used for a raidz (RAID 5) ZFS file system. The use of various (though certainly not all) options available in ZFS are shown.
DISCLAIMER: I'm using the settings and drives that exist on the box I just got done with. Yours may be different - adjust the specifics as needed. I obtained some of this information from the internet, but mostly by experimenting on my own. It works perfectly for me, but may not for you. I'm not responsible for any data loss, fights, wars, apocalyptic disasters, spontaneous combustion of either yourself or others, defenestration, brain liquification, invasion of paranormal mind-controlling levitating eyeball-creatures from another dimension, or any other damages that may arise from the use or misuse of this information. In other words, you are responsible for your own actions.
I know I should have used cmd tags instead of file, but cmd automatically does a line break around the tag and screws up the indentation. I put the whole thing in a code block for the same reason - spaces don't show up correctly otherwise. Apologies in advance to DD.
I hope this helps somebody.
DISCLAIMER: I'm using the settings and drives that exist on the box I just got done with. Yours may be different - adjust the specifics as needed. I obtained some of this information from the internet, but mostly by experimenting on my own. It works perfectly for me, but may not for you. I'm not responsible for any data loss, fights, wars, apocalyptic disasters, spontaneous combustion of either yourself or others, defenestration, brain liquification, invasion of paranormal mind-controlling levitating eyeball-creatures from another dimension, or any other damages that may arise from the use or misuse of this information. In other words, you are responsible for your own actions.
Code:
1. Wipe the start of all three drives with binary 0s to start clean.
1a. Boot from Linux LiveCD
1b. [file]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=100[/file]
1c. [file]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=100[/file]
1d. [file]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=1M count=100[/file]
2. Start the installation.
2a. Boot from the FreeBSD 8.1 amd64 install DVD.
2b. Choose your country.
2c. Begin the Standard install process.
3. Create partitions.
3a. Select the first drive, ad8, from the menu.
3b. Create a 25000m partition, type 165.
3c. Create a 3869m partition, type 165.
3d. Create a partition for the rest of the space, type 165.
3b. Hit q to exit the partition manager.
3e. Select BootMgr to install a boot manager.
3f. Repeat steps 3b through 3e for the second and third drives shown, ad10 and ad12.
(Later it'll be important that the partitions themselves exist.)
4. Create slices in the partitions.
4a. Create a single slice in ad8s2, ad10s2, and ad12s2; designate them as swap.
4b. Create a 3000m slice in ad8s1; filesystem is /
4c. Create a 2000m slice in ad8s1; filesystem is /tmp
4d. Create a 10000m slice in ad8s1; filesystem is /usr
4e. Create another slice in ad8s1; filesystem is /var
(Don't bother creating slices inside ad10 or ad12 aside from swap in s2).
5. Install system from the DVD. I usually install everything but the ports, which I download the latest version of later.
6. Go through the configuration, entering what you want for your system.
7. Reboot, again booting from the install DVD.
(This is needed because the file systems on ad8 are mounted after the install.)
(For whatever reason, they cannot be umounted from the shell after installation.)
(A reboot gets around this.)
8. Enter a shell.
8a. Select FixIt from the main menu.
8b. Choose the option to use the file system from the DVD.
9. Create the mirror.
9a. [file]ln -s /dist/boot/kernel /boot[/file]
(This is to allow gmirror to work when running from the DVD.)
(If you try to load gmirror without this, you'll see that it won't work.)
9b. [file]gmirror load[/file]
9c. [file]gmirror label -v gm0s1 /dev/ad8s1[/file]
10. Set system to use mirror at startup.
10a. [file]mount /dev/mirror/gm0s1a /mnt[/file]
10b. [file]echo geom_mirror_load="YES" >> /mnt/boot/loader.conf[/file]
10c. Edit /mnt/etc/fstab and change each of the 4 file systems (/, /tmp, /usr, and /var) from /dev/ad8s1x to /dev/mirror/gm0s1x
11. Reboot. Boot into the Linux LiveCD again.
12. Remove the bootable flag from all but the first partition.
12a. [file]fdisk /dev/sda[/file]
12b. a[ENTER]2[ENTER]a[ENTER]3[ENTER]w[ENTER]
(This toggles the activate flag on partition 2 and 3, then writes out the changes.)
12c. Repeat 12a and 12b for /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc.
13. Reboot again, this time boot from the hard drive.
14. Make the mirror have more than one disk.
14a. [file]gmirror insert gm0s1 /dev/ad10s1[/file]
14b. [file]gmirror insert gm0s1 /dev/ad12s1[/file]
14c. [file]gmirror status[/file]
14d. Wait for a while, repeating 14c every few minutes.
14e. When the status shows complete, the system is now mirrored across all three drives.
15. Enable ZFS at startup.
15a. [file]echo zfs_enable="YES" >> /etc/rc.conf[/file]
16. Create the ZFS pool.
16a. [file]zpool create tank raidz ad8s3 ad10s3 ad12s3[/file]
17. Create mount points inside of ZFS. Each mount point may have different properties.
17a. [file]zfs create tank/home[/file]
17b. [file]zfs create tank/home/ruler[/file]
17c. [file]zfs create tank/home/ruler/programs[/file]
17d. [file]zfs create tank/home/virtualprinter[/file]
18. Set various options on the different ZFS mount points.
18a. [file]zfs set compression=gzip tank/home/virtualprinter[/file]
(/home/virtualprinter is made up of almost exclusively text files.)
(Because of this, compression saves considerable space.)
18b. [file]zfs set copies=2 tank/home/ruler/programs[/file]
(The system will keep 2 copies of programs I've written.)
(This is in addition to the RAID redundancy.)
18c. [file]zfs set atime=off tank[/file]
(I really don't care when the files were last accessed.)
(Turning off the recording of such information improves performance.)
(This one line affects the all the mount points in the entire ZFS.)
19. Get ZFS home ready.
19a. [file]cp -p /home/ruler/.* /tank/home/ruler[/file]
(The -p is important to preserve the file permissions.)
19b. [file]chown -R ruler:users /tank/home/ruler[/file]
20. Begin using new ZFS home directory.
20a. [file]rm /home[/file]
(/home is a symbolic link to /usr/home on FreeBSD 8.1.)
(You can look in /usr/home/ruler for the original files afterwards if you want.)
(Because it is a symbolic link, rm -r or rmdir is not needed.)
20b. [file]zfs set mountpoint=/home tank/home[/file]
20c. Enjoy!I know I should have used cmd tags instead of file, but cmd automatically does a line break around the tag and screws up the indentation. I put the whole thing in a code block for the same reason - spaces don't show up correctly otherwise. Apologies in advance to DD.
I hope this helps somebody.