car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) (11/16/89)
[ Nixdorf Targon M35/50 TOS 3.2 - Pyramid 9810 OSx 4.0 - MP14 disks]
The System V Release 2 kernel allowed a file system to be built (MKFS'ed)
on a slice/partition which was larger than the slice/partition.
(I.e., file systems began on slice/partition boundaries but could
include other slices/partitions).
(Boy - this is hard to put into words).
On the Pyramid (BSD), Can a file system cross partition boundaries?
Can I MKFS a file system that uses all the disk space from pdisk00a,
pdisk00b, and pdisk00c on /dev/iop/pdisk00a?
Or, is /dev/iop/pdisk00o the only way to combine pdisk00[abc]? (o=a+b+c)
car.
--
Christopher A. Rende Central Cartage (Nixdorf/Pyramid/SysV/BSD4.3)
uunet!edsews!rphroy!trux!car Multics,DTSS,Unix,Shortwave,Scanners,StarTrek
trux!car@uunet.uu.net Minix,PC/XT,Mac+,TRS-80 Model I: Buy Sell Trade
"I don't ever remember forgetting anything." - Chris Rendecsg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) (11/16/89)
In article <308@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >On the Pyramid (BSD), Can a file system cross partition boundaries? Sure. Using the -s option to newfs. We go both ways -- making the filesystem either larger or smaller than the standard size. It's very common to build a 90MB filesystem stradling the 'b' and 'c' partitions, for example, by making a short filesystem starting from partition 'h.' We generally don't start with 'b' and make it larger, though, since people tend to assume that any parti- tion called 'b' will be 30MB. At least if it's called 'h', you have a warning that something strange is being done. Be careful of doing this sortof thing on the 00 disk; OSx "knows" that 00b is for swapping, and will try to use that space for swapping whether you tell it to or not. Of course, be sure to write down your oddsized partitions somewhere. <csg>
car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) (11/17/89)
In article <91317@pyramid.pyramid.com>, csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes: > In article <308@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: > >On the Pyramid (BSD), Can a file system cross partition boundaries? > > Sure. Using the -s option to newfs. We go both ways -- making the filesystem > either larger or smaller than the standard size. > > Be careful of doing this sortof thing on the 00 disk; OSx "knows" that 00b is > for swapping, and will try to use that space for swapping whether you tell it > to or not. Are there any other gottcha's that OSx "knows" about? Does the ROOT partition have to be 00a? Can OSx somehow be told not to use 00b for swapping but rather look in /etc/fstab for the information? (Is this one of those "Which came first: the chicken or the egg" stories? I.e., can't get at /etc/fstab to find out where the swap area is until the ROOT partition (00a) is mounted - and can't get enough of the system started [in order to disk mount] without first establishing a swap/paging area - so, just assume that 00b is a swap area)? What I'm trying to do is increase the size of my ROOT and USR file systems in order to make room for TOS 3.3 (OSx 4.4). In order to make more room for my ROOT partition I can add 00b's blocks into 00a, giving a 50Mb ROOT partition (I'd use 00a instead of 00j because 00a seems to have special meaning as a ROOT partition). But, from the info above, OSx would trash my ROOT partition by writing swap/paging stuff into it via 00b. It looks like I have these choices for increasing the size of my file systems: - Alter the partition "hard boundaries" to suite my needs (conf.c). - Use VDISK to create small file systems to mount on /tmp, /usr/spool, /usr/adm, etc... - Use symbolic links for dir's and files which grow so that the disk space is drawn from another file system. None of these seem like clean solutions to me. What have other people done to solve this problem? car. -- Christopher A. Rende Central Cartage (Nixdorf/Pyramid/SysVR2/BSD4.3) uunet!edsews!rphroy!trux!car Multics,DTSS,Unix,Shortwave,Scanners,StarTrek trux!car@uunet.uu.net Minix,PC/XT,Mac+,TRS-80 Model I,1802 ELF "I don't ever remember forgetting anything." - Chris Rende
greg@moxie.UUCP (Greg Hackney) (11/17/89)
In article <309@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >What I'm trying to do is increase the size of my ROOT and USR file systems >in order to make room for TOS 3.3 (OSx 4.4). No root file space is a standard feature of 4.4. -- Greg Vatican Express Card - Don't leave Rome without it.
linda@cc.brunel.ac.uk (Linda Birmingham) (11/20/89)
In article <91317@pyramid.pyramid.com> csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes: >In article <308@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >>On the Pyramid (BSD), Can a file system cross partition boundaries? > Isn't this what virtual file systems are all about ?? > Linda. -- Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, England. janet: linda@uk.ac.brunel.cc | :-) uucp:...ukc!cc.brunel!linda |
steve@qe2.tcspa.ibm.com (Steve DeJarnett) (11/28/89)
In article <309@trux.UUCP>, car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: > In article <91317@pyramid.pyramid.com>, csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes: > > In article <308@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: > > >On the Pyramid (BSD), Can a file system cross partition boundaries? > > > > Sure. Using the -s option to newfs. We go both ways -- making the filesystem > > either larger or smaller than the standard size. > > > > Be careful of doing this sortof thing on the 00 disk; OSx "knows" that 00b is > > for swapping Actually, isn't it more like OSx knows that the 'b' partition of the drive on which the root filesystem is loaded is a swap partition?? (i.e. if your root lives on 01a, then OSx knows/assumes that 01b is a swap partition). > Are there any other gottcha's that OSx "knows" about? > Does the ROOT partition have to be 00a? At least under 4.4, the root could be any 'a' partition (I know that for certain because I ended up having to try it). It may allow root to be on a partition besides 'a', but I can't say for certain whether that's true. > What I'm trying to do is increase the size of my ROOT and USR file systems > in order to make room for TOS 3.3 (OSx 4.4). You should be able to fit all of ROOT on an 'a' partition IF you keep the wtmp logging on another partition or delete the wtmp file fairly regularly (the system I used to run deleted it every week -- this was on a heavily-used 98x). I wouldn't advise making your ROOT partition non-standard. In fact, it may not be possible unless you never plan to upgrade OS's again. If you make your ROOT non-standard, then when you upgrade, you would have to first back up EVERYTHING (at least everything on one of your 'a' partitions), then install TOS, then make new partitions that TOS knows about, copy all of the data to the new ROOT partition, then reboot with that info. That's a lot of work for a small gain (in my opinion). So, you might want to consider having an 'a' partition for root (with suitable pruning of log files, etc.). As for making /usr larger, I'd say that I don't recommend it, but it's not as bad as trying to make ROOT larger (my last system had a non-standard /usr). If you do, place it on a different drive from root, then create it as an 'h' partition. Make it large enough to hold log files, etc. that tend to grow. What you will end up doing when you do a new OS install is loading root onto it's partition, stopping the install. Editing the fstab on disk to ignore /usr for the time being, booting off of the disk, recreating your 'h' partition in conf.c, adding /usr back into /etc/fstab, build a new kernel, then reboot. After this you should be able to get to your old /usr, at which time you can run the installusr (or whatever it was called) portion of the install. Still a lot of work, but doable. > In order to make more room for my ROOT partition I can add 00b's blocks > into 00a, giving a 50Mb ROOT partition (I'd use 00a instead of 00j because > 00a seems to have special meaning as a ROOT partition). But, from the info > above, OSx would trash my ROOT partition by writing swap/paging stuff into > it via 00b. Yes, it will. I ended up losing quite a few files when OSx used a 'b' partition on the drive I was booting off of to swap. Unfortunately, at that time, the 'b' partition was part of another partition that held user files. (thank goodness I had fresh backups!) > It looks like I have these choices for increasing the size of my file systems: > - Use symbolic links for dir's and files which grow so that the disk space > is drawn from another file system. This is what we did. All log files and other rapidly changing, dynamic areas of the filesystem resided on larger disks via symbolic links. > Christopher A. Rende That's how we handled it. It may not be the cleanest way ever invented, but it does do the trick, and it's not too difficult to deal with. IBM doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) own any Pyramids. All of this was derived from past experiences, etc. Steve DeJarnett IBM Internal: steve@ibmpa.tcspa.ibm.com IBM AWD Palo Alto UUCP: ibmsupt!steve@uunet.uu.net (415) 855-3510 VNET: steve at paloalto These opinions are my own. I doubt IBM wants them.......
csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) (11/29/89)
In article <309@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >Are there any other gottcha's that OSx "knows" about? > >Does the ROOT partition have to be 00a? It has to be 'a' on the boot disk. And 'b' on the boot disk will always be for swapping. These are absolutely, positively wired into the kernel, and you cannot do anything about it. (Unless you muck with the source, of course.) Don't make your root partition larger; just move things off of it. The most important of these is /tmp, which should be off on it's own partition if at all possible. Do not use symbolic links to the growing files in /etc; there are hidden pitfalls. :-( Pyramid moved a lot of stuff off of the root disk and onto /usr; now /usr is overcroweded. It really is getting these days so that you cannot run a UNIX system with just one 400MB disk. (I still have a massive 1MB RAM and 65MB disk on my PDP-11/73....) <csg>