On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 1:12 AM, scott <new.mail.ba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks for the input. since i have no interest in multibooting (virtualbox > will suit my needs), i created a 10gb partition on my 500gb drive for > opensolaris and reserved the rest for files (130gb worth). > > after installing the os and fdisking the rest of the space to solaris2, i > created a zpool called DOCUMENTS (good tips with the upper case), which i > then mounted to Documents in my home folder. > > the logic is, if i have to reinstall, i just export DOCUMENTS and re-import > it into the reinstalled os (or import -f in a worst-case scenario). > > after having done all the setup, i partitioned drive 2 using identical > cylinder locs and mirrored each into their respective pools (rpool and > DOCUMENTS). replacing drive 1 with 2 and starting back up, everything boots > fine and i see all my data, so it worked. > > obviously i'm a noob, and yet even i find my own method a little > suspicious. i look at the disk usage analyzer and see that / is 100% used. > while i'm sure that this is in some kind of "virtual" sense, it leaves me > with a feeling that i've done a goofy thing. > > comments about this last concern are greatly appreciated! > Firstly, 10 GB is a bit on the lean side for a Solaris root pool. The pool needs to store about 6GB of software, a Swap Device, and a Dump Device. OpenSolaris also gives you upgrade with roll-back. For this purpose I reserved about 8 GB per "instance". The way I do it is as follow: 8 GB for the current version 8 GB for current - 1. 8 GB for a "transient" version - see below 6 GB for Swap and Dump. 10 GB for some flexibility, installing software, etc. Total for Solaris partition: 40 GB The transient instance does not stay on the disk for long. The upgrade strategy is as follow: When running on version N, and upgrading to N+1, you will still have N-1 on disk. Thus, space for 3 releases is needed. A few days after upgrading to N+1, I start to consider it to be the new N. The old N-1 is then redundant, and I delete it at that point. The exception is if the new release doesn't work to my liking. Then I delete it, and keep the old N and N-1. I ALWAYS keep one older release on disk - if nothing else, I've had to use it as a "recovery" environment many times. However, it is a somewhat "expensive" recovery area: In particular, I am using Solaris Express. It is possible to create a "recovery" alternate boot environment as follow: Create a new boot environment (lucreate -n recovery) Make it bootable (lucativate recovery) Boot into it once (init 6) Make the "old BE" active again and boot back into it. The result is a recovery environment from which you can boot, which does not take any disk space (other than whatever changes on disk) because it is based on a snapshot of the existing/current boot environment. I don't know the OpenSolaris upgrade mechanism yet, though I understand that something similar is possible. -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke My blog: http://initialprogramload.blogspot.com
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