galacticroot
join:2004-05-17
clubs:
| reply to koitsu
Re: Problem with Open Solaris + disks
Okay, I tried changing to AHCI mode, but the Open Solaris drivers seem to have an issue with that and can't mount the root filesystem. Returning to the original mode allows it to boot.
The hardware I find that definitely works well with Open Solaris seems to all be higher end than I can afford right now. I'm going to switch the file storage over to a separate NAS setup running OpenFiler, and replace Open Solaris with Linux on this system and run the VMs on that. |
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beerbum
Premium
join:2000-05-06
Reading, PA
clubs:
| may I ask a stupid question.. why are you using OpenSolaris to begin with? if this is a mission critical server, heck even if it's a mission optional machine, I do not recommend running OpenSolaris.
Sun's production Solaris costs just the same and is (IMO) the more reliable route to go in a business setting. |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
| reply to galacticroot
said by galacticroot  :Okay, I tried changing to AHCI mode, but the Open Solaris drivers seem to have an issue with that and can't mount the root filesystem. Returning to the original mode allows it to boot. This isn't a "driver issue" -- it's probably that the device label (and all underlying filesystem slices) has changed. The disks probably won't be named "c3d0s0" any more, but could be "cXd0s0" where X is some new number, or, are labelled "sdX".
We have the same problem on FreeBSD, and Windows requires an entire reinstall. 
ZFS should be able to cope with the device names changing.
said by beerbum :may I ask a stupid question.. why are you using OpenSolaris to begin with? if this is a mission critical server, heck even if it's a mission optional machine, I do not recommend running OpenSolaris. Sun's production Solaris costs just the same and is (IMO) the more reliable route to go in a business setting. Given that my place of employment has relied on Solaris 8 through 10 (~90% of our machines are using 10 at this point) for 5+ years now, my experience is quite the opposite. I'm talking multiple thousands of machines, all x86 (at this point), and all are mission + time-critical (all production, and are involved with VoIP + IVR; 2-3 second "stalls" or other oddities a server might encounter result in horrible caller experience, and we can't have that).
We open SunSolve cases for strange things we encounter and Sun is responsive. I'm not saying "you're wrong", I'm saying my experience is entirely different. Of course, low-level administration of devices and hardware on Solaris is significantly better on Sparc (and I do mean significantly), but x86 is standard these days.
Btrfs is the only thing on Linux that even remotely behaves like the OP's ZFS configuration. I would HIGHLY recommend the OP read the following thread (and news article!):
»Chris Mason Interview - BTRFS Founder & Lead Developer
Use whatever OS gets the job done. If that's Linux, great. If that's Solaris 10, great. If that's OS/2, I'll punch you. 
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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beerbum
Premium
join:2000-05-06
Reading, PA
clubs:
| said by koitsu :Given that my place of employment has relied on Solaris 8 through 10 (~90% of our machines are using 10 at this point) for 5+ years now, my experience is quite the opposite. huh??.. maybe you missed it.. the OP is running OpenSolaris (SunOS 5.11), not Solaris (SunOS 5.10).. I would not recommend anyone run OpenSolaris in a production system. Heck no admin worth anyone would recommend that.. Comparing OpenSolaris to Solaris, the SATA support is much more robust than the same in OpenSolaris.. While the new features and whatnot in OS do make it into production Solaris, one should consider OpenSolaris as a beta product.
Hell I'm pretty sure even Sun does not recommend using OpenSolaris in a production environment..
Use whatever OS gets the job done. If that's Linux, great. If that's Solaris 10, great. If that's OS/2, I'll punch you. |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
| said by beerbum :huh??.. maybe you missed it.. the OP is running OpenSolaris (SunOS 5.11), not Solaris (SunOS 5.10).. ... Well colour me stupid. For the longest while now I've been under the impression that Solaris 10 (5.10) was in fact OpenSolaris. Good lord, there's something seriously wrong when an administrator of machines doesn't even know what the official title of his OS is.
I think I might save this thread to remind me of my stupid moments.
Thanks for clearing that up for me -- I appreciate it. (Damn you Sun...)
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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galacticroot
join:2004-05-17
clubs:
| This was just a personal system which I built primarily as a NAS box, but also to run a couple VMs for various things. I was more or less running OpenSolaris strictly for the features of ZFS. I thought I would end up adding a lot more space and using some other features of ZFS which I never ended up using.
I will look at btrfs. It sounds like it could be very nice in the future.
For now, OpenFiler looks like it will work well enough for NAS, and Linux or BSD will be good for running the VMs. |
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galacticroot
join:2004-05-17
clubs:
| I finally managed to move the files over to an Openfiler box and I just installed Debian on the system that has OpenSolaris.
I used smartmon tools to check both hard drives. Disk 1 is fine, but disk 2 has quite a few reallocated sectors (currently at 1996). I will definitely replace it if I get any more reallocated sectors. I suspect that the read failures created by disk 2 were not being handled well by OpenSolaris (or rather the SATA driver).
Linux seems to handle the errors correctly, although I haven't tried it out with the Xen VMs yet (I'm currently transferring the images). |
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