ADSM-L

Re: basic solaris questions

2002-10-07 04:40:56
Subject: Re: basic solaris questions
From: Remco Post <r.post AT SARA DOT NL>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 10:37:51 +0200
Hi,

On maandag, oktober 7, 2002, at 02:28 , Justin Bleistein wrote:

I'm sorrrrrrrrry guys!!!. I know this is an AIX forum and I'm an AIX
guru
myself but I have a few really basic and perhaps inept Solaris questions
for any Solaris admins out there:

1.) I'm reading this Solaris beginners admin guide, here are I'm reading
about partitioning a new disk with this format utility. Do you need to
configure a root partition tag even on additional disk? I can see on the
primary disk that tag(root) is configured as the actual "/" filesystem.
They also have an example on an additional external disk where they have
root on it as well. This confused me. Now I know in AIX you can have the
root logical volume/partition span multiple hdisks/disks. That's why I
saw
root on multiple disks at first but it turned out that these two disks
had
nothing to do with one another neither do the partitions. Any input onto
why all disks on this system has a "root" partition tag would be
appreciated.


I've not seen the example, tags are some misfeature in the partition
table, and I guess their best use is to help the administrator remember
what the slice is for. Each partition is one contiguous area on the disk.

Also question b on the same subject would be, does the partition tag
have
anything to do with the actual filesystem name? Or can I have an oracle
filesystem/mount point called: "/oradata" on a "/usr" partition tag?.


Partitions tags are unuses afaik, so your, you could tag your oracle
slices as 'usr' or whatever. I never found out what these tags are for,
and I guess they will dissapear in the next release of the partition
table.


question c is when you repartiton disks like add space or change the
starting and ending point of a partition on these systems. Do you need
to
reboot the system after you save and label the table or is it automatic.
Also it says any partition modification will wreck the filesystem/data
which resides on it. It says you should back it up first. Does any
partition modification include expanding it?. I know in AIX you can
expand
on the fly via: "chfs" without a reboot.


Solaris partitions are really oldfasioned, like dos partitions. They
cannot be extended or reduced or moved without destroying the data. You
do not need to reboot, the os sees the changes to the label directly
after it's been written.

question d How do you handle modifying system partitions such as the
partitions which: "/", "/tmp", "/opt", and "/var" reside on?. I'm
assuming
they can't be modified except for either a new installation of the O/S,
or
through a single user mode boot and a "/newroot" mounting method?.


true. That's why it's very important to do a good guess on the size of /
on first install.

Please advise. I hope it's not too confusing. Again I'm a beginner so go
easy on me. I live and die by AIX but coming over to the DARK SIDE a
bit.
thanks!.


Once you'll get to know Solaris, you'll learn that is a more transparant
os, better showing how things are configured, more using vi as a config
tool than anything else. I've been doing solaris before I switched to
AIX, and after about a year, I still think AIX sucks... Trying to hide
from me how things work, not a good move ;-)

--Justin

--
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Remco Post

SARA - Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam    http://www.sara.nl
High Performance Computing  Tel. +31 20 592 8008    Fax. +31 20 668 3167
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