zfs discuss - Feb 2010 - What Happend to my OpenSolaris X86 Install?

Just finished setting up a new DB server with the latest OpenSolaris release
from the LiveCD image. After spending the last few days learning about the new
admin features and the ZFS I wanted to see if the second disk in my machine was
part of the rpool. I could not find for sure so I restarted with a fresh burn of
the GParted LiveCD to see if I could find out if both of my disk where formatted
to ZFS. I was planning on setting up the second disk as a WAL disk for my DB.

Now my questions is during the install the OpenSolaris LiveCD said it was going
to erase the existing data on my hard drives which was okay with me. That data
was a older linux Distro. The OpenSolaris Install went fine with no issues to
date. I ran OpenSolaris on that machine for about 4 days, shutting down and
starting up a number of times over that period.

Just now after ejecting the GParted LiveCD disk I rebooted and now my machines
boots up to my old linux distro which is fully functional.

What gives? 

How can I get my OpenSolaris install back and how do I prevent this from
happening again?

Thanks

Jeff
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Look at your BIOS setting and make sure you''re booting from the HD that
has Opensolaris.

Antonello

On 02/10/10 03:53 PM, Jeff Rogers wrote:
> Just finished setting up a new DB server with the latest OpenSolaris
release from the LiveCD image. After spending the last few days learning about
the new admin features and the ZFS I wanted to see if the second disk in my
machine was part of the rpool. I could not find for sure so I restarted with a
fresh burn of the GParted LiveCD to see if I could find out if both of my disk
where formatted to ZFS. I was planning on setting up the second disk as a WAL
disk for my DB.
>
> Now my questions is during the install the OpenSolaris LiveCD said it was
going to erase the existing data on my hard drives which was okay with me. That
data was a older linux Distro. The OpenSolaris Install went fine with no issues
to date. I ran OpenSolaris on that machine for about 4 days, shutting down and
starting up a number of times over that period.
>
> Just now after ejecting the GParted LiveCD disk I rebooted and now my
machines boots up to my old linux distro which is fully functional.
>
> What gives?
>
> How can I get my OpenSolaris install back and how do I prevent this from
happening again?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jeff

Thanks for the tip but it was not that. The two hard drives where running under
RAID 1 on my Linux install so the two drives have identical information on them
when I installed OpenSolaris. I disable the hardware RAID support in my BIOS to
install OpenSolaris. Looking at the disk from the still functional linux OS on
the disk it appears that OpenSolaris only formatted some of the partitions to
ZFS. As luck would have it the unformatted ZFS partitions (which are still EXT3)
has the MBR and the rest of the file system to run just fine. Looking at the
partition table under Linux I can see the partitions that are formatted ZFS as
they are shown but not supported with Linux.

Bummer. Looks like I will have to reformat the drives with GParted and reinstall
OpenSolaris. I can not see how a LiveCD of GParted could gain access to my
filesystem before I say it is okay to rewrite the MBR. I suppose this is a
GParted issue and not a OpenSolaris one. I''ll go bark up that tree now.

Does anyone have any good pointers of info on OpenSolaris, Postgres with WAL
enabled and ZFS?
I would like to put the WAL files on a different disk than the one with the OS
and Postgres.

Thanks

Jeff
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

My guess is that the grub bootloader wasn''t upgraded on the actual boot
disk.  Search for directions on how to mirror ZFS boot drives and
you''ll see how to copy the correct grub loader onto the boot disk.

If you want to do this simpler, swap the disks.  I did this when I was moving
from SXCE to OSOL so I could make sure that things worked before making one of
the drives a mirror.
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

This sounds more like an install issue than a zfs issue.  I suggest you 
take this to caiman-discuss at opensolaris.org .

Lori

On 02/10/10 23:44, Jeff Rogers wrote:
> Thanks for the tip but it was not that. The two hard drives where running
under RAID 1 on my Linux install so the two drives have identical information on
them when I installed OpenSolaris. I disable the hardware RAID support in my
BIOS to install OpenSolaris. Looking at the disk from the still functional linux
OS on the disk it appears that OpenSolaris only formatted some of the partitions
to ZFS. As luck would have it the unformatted ZFS partitions (which are still
EXT3) has the MBR and the rest of the file system to run just fine. Looking at
the partition table under Linux I can see the partitions that are formatted ZFS
as they are shown but not supported with Linux.
>
> Bummer. Looks like I will have to reformat the drives with GParted and
reinstall OpenSolaris. I can not see how a LiveCD of GParted could gain access
to my filesystem before I say it is okay to rewrite the MBR. I suppose this is a
GParted issue and not a OpenSolaris one. I''ll go bark up that tree now.
>
> Does anyone have any good pointers of info on OpenSolaris, Postgres with
WAL enabled and ZFS?
> I would like to put the WAL files on a different disk than the one with the
OS and Postgres.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jeff
>