GEOM
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I see that in pfSense 2.0.1 GEOM is not available…but the kernel modules reside in /lib/geom which can't be loaded at all:
kldload: can't load /lib/geom/geom_stripe.so: Exec format error
Also the GEOM utilities are missing but can't be scp'ied over from a FBSD 8.1 DVD...
So how do you get GEOM working on it?
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My mistake..kernel modules must be in /boot/kernel…
So theoretically I can copy those also over...
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Okay..here're the steps required:
- Copy gstripe progam from FBSD8.1 DVD over to /sbin
- Copy GEOM kernel modules from FBSD8.1 DVD over to /boot/kernel
- Load the GEOM kernel module with "kldload geom_stripe"
I have two additional disks in my N40L appearing as /dev/ad6 and /dev/ad8:
- Erase any partition information on the drives with "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adX count=100"
- Create the stripe with "gstripe label -v st0 /dev/ad6 /dev/ad8"
- Create a single partition on the stripe with "gpart create -s gpt /dev/stripe/st0"
- Create a filesystem on the stripe with "newfs -U /dev/stripe/st0p1"
Now the stripe is ready to be mounted…
- Create a mountpoint, for example "mkdir /stripe"
- Mount the volume with "mount /dev/stripe/st0p1 /stripe"
Now we need to add some entries so GEOM is available at next boot and that the stripe is mounted:
- Add a loader entry in /boot/loader.conf with: geom_stripe_load="YES"
- Add fstab entry: "echo "/dev/stripe/st0p1 /stripe ufs rw 2 2" >> /etc/fstab"
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That may be true for gstripe, but we do have gmirror support (even in the installer)
Why would you want to stripe two disks on pfSense? That doesn't make a lot of sense, RAID 0 would only reduce your stability over time. It only helps to gain space by adding disks together to get a larger storage area. Not much use on a firewall (unless it's a separate non-boot volume for something like squid).
gmirror makes sense as it gives you RAID 1 redundancy with two or more disks.
