partitioning on HPUX
Can anyone here describe how HPUX does partitioning? We're going to have to look at this at some point for interoperability with HPUX filesystems.
- Alex
Quoted 3 lines · Alex deVries
Can anyone here describe how HPUX does partitioning? We're going to have to look at this at some point for interoperability with HPUX filesystems.
As I understand it, HP-UX doesn't really do partitioning. You have a choice of either using a whole disk for a file system, or you can use the logical volume manager. From what I've seen, most of the people who use LVM also use VxFS (or JFS, a journalling filesystem). It would probably be easiest then to just try to support HFS (HP's version of UFS, I think) using a whole disk.
Steve
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[email protected] | Linux Users of Central Illinois (217)698-1694 | Meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month Steven Pritchard | http://www.luci.org/ for more info
Yes -- I agree. Most who use LVM will be using VxFS, so just onlu supporting whole disk HFS for now is probably the best.
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As I understand it, HP-UX doesn't really do partitioning. You have a choice of either using a whole disk for a file system, or you can use the logical volume manager. From what I've seen, most of the people who use LVM also use VxFS (or JFS, a journalling filesystem). It would probably be easiest then to just try to support HFS (HP's version of UFS, I think) using a whole disk.
Steve
--[email protected] | Linux Users of Central Illinois (217)698-1694 | Meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month Steven Pritchard | http://www.luci.org/ for more info
Re:
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Yes -- I agree. Most who use LVM will be using VxFS, so just onlu supporting whole disk HFS for now is probably the best.
Is that supported by surveys/counts?
On HP-UX, we use LVM with HFS, but never VxFS, because the partition changing tools are free with LVM but are separate charged products for VxFS.
Additionally, check the bug reports...VxFS is fraught with problems compare to HFS. So, at this point, with problems and cost, we're
staying on HFS. The majority of customers we deal with are also
on HFS, for the same reasons.
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As I understand it, HP-UX doesn't really do partitioning. You have a
It used to, but that was dropped (as of 11.0?).
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would probably be easiest then to just try to support HFS (HP's version of UFS, I think) using a whole disk.
Signature · 2 lines
Stan Sieler [email protected] http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html
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Quoted 3 lines · Alex deVries
Can anyone here describe how HPUX does partitioning? We're going to have to look at this at some point for interoperability with HPUX filesystems.
As I understand it, HP-UX doesn't really do partitioning. You have a choice of either using a whole disk for a file system, or you can use the logical volume manager. From what I've seen, most of the people who use LVM also use VxFS (or JFS, a journalling filesystem). It would probably be easiest then to just try to support HFS (HP's version of UFS, I think) using a whole disk.
On hpux 9.x and later (?), partitioning was supported using Software Disk Striping (SDS). See sdsadmin(1M).
Dave
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J. David Anglin [email protected] National Research Council of Canada (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6605)
Are you talking about the logical volume manager (LVM) (similar to Veritas's)? That's the disk allocation scheme used most these days.
Rich
----- Original Message -----
From: Alex deVries <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 1999 11:19 PM
Subject: [parisc-linux] partitioning on HPUX
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Can anyone here describe how HPUX does partitioning? We're going to have to look at this at some point for interoperability with HPUX filesystems.
- Alex
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Quoted 4 lines · Alex deVries
Can anyone here describe how HPUX does partitioning? We're going to have to look at this at some point for interoperability with HPUX filesystems.
Besides LVM (with JxFS), HP-UX also supports "Hard Partitioning". The partition information is encoded in both the kernel and /etc/disktab. As the note in /etc/disktab says, it's use is strongly discouraged. The driver behavior is similar to "Soft Partitioning" used on PC's except that the information is hard coded in an OS table instead of reading it off reserved sectors on the disk.
Having once supported HP-UX SCSI disk drivers, I can only second the reccomendation already made to only support "whole disk" file systems. The whole hard partioning thing was a mess. Eventually, if someone really needs to partition a disk, some support for LVM could be added (and hopefully with a better user interface).
grant
ps. "man -k sds" on my 10.20 box reports "sds: nothing appropriate". I tried it on several in-house timeshare machines and got the same result. I think this was pre-LVM mirroring/striping support. LVM was pushed heavily around the 10.X introduction 3 to 4 years ago to replace the older mirroring/striping.
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- Alex
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Grant Grundler
Enterprise Systems Technology Lab
+1.408.447.7253
Quoted 5 lines · Grant Grundler
Having once supported HP-UX SCSI disk drivers, I can only second the reccomendation already made to only support "whole disk" file systems. The whole hard partioning thing was a mess. Eventually, if someone really needs to partition a disk, some support for LVM could be added (and hopefully with a better user interface).
Most Linux distributions really expect some sort of partitioning, so it's easier to just inherit an existing one.
Usually there's a native partitioning format to follow, but by not having one we're forced to choose one. The obvious one is DOS, because it's been done many times over. I'd be happier doing something a little more sane like SGI though.
Oh, and at some point we'll do LVM, but that'll mean merging it in with the existing Linux LVM tools.
- Alex
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Most Linux distributions really expect some sort of partitioning, so it's easier to just inherit an existing one.
We get all the existing ones for free.
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Oh, and at some point we'll do LVM, but that'll mean merging it in with the existing Linux LVM tools.
It depends how smart the HP LVM is and if its documented enough. LVM is just a variant on the raid striping problem so its not a lot of code to support until you want to do clever stuff like live resizing