Tiny UPS for Tiny NAS Reloaded

Last time when I wrote Tiny UPS for Tiny NAS – I fucked up. I did not tested the solution enough and provided false information – I apologize for that. This time I did the homework and after I get many comments and recommendations I decided to try two other solutions that actually work as UPS and provide the power all the time.

They are:

• EATON 3S Mini 36W 2200mAh UPS
• ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh Powerbank

Lets check how they compare.

EATON 3S Mini 36W 2200mAh UPS

Lets start with EATON 3S Mini as some people suggested that using powerbank may not be the best idea due to potential overheating issues or literally killing its battery over time. You may check its page – https://eaton.com.cn/gb/en-gb/skuPage.3SM36.html – for details and all specs.

Here is how it looks like.

… and also the bottom view with its specs.

Its nice that EATON 3S Mini came with four dedicated plugs.

The following possible power modes are available.

OUTPUT  36W  9V/3A  12V/3A  15V/2.4A  19V/1.89A

The mode switching is nicely and graphically explained in the Quick Start guide.

Here is how much space EATON 3S Mini takes being under the Dell Wyse 3030 LT and its disks.

While the Baseus 100W 20000mAh capacity allowed about 500 minutes (or 8:20 time) of offgrid operation the EATON 3S Mini 2200mAh allows about 1 hour of power time. More than enough for my limited needs.

ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh Powerbank

The second working UPS like solution is ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh powerbank … and yes – it does not stop passing power while You attach or detach power source to it – tested thoroughly this time 🙂

It is even listed in the UPS category on the manufacturer’s page – https://reasonone.ai/collections/ups-backup-batteries – available here.

Here is how it looks like.

It comes with two USB-C slots and one USB-A slot.

It also supports many power modes – a lot more than EATON 3S Mini for sure.

The following power modes are available on ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh powerbank.

OUTPUT 1  USB-C  100W  5V/3A  9V/3A  12V/3A  15V/3A  20V/5A
OUTPUT 2  USB-A   45W  5V/3A  9V/3A  12V/3A  15V/3A  20V/2.25A
OUTPUT 3  USB-C  100W  5V/3A  9V/3A  12V/3A  15V/3A  20V/5A
TOTAL     -      210W  5V/6A  9V/6A  12V/6A  15V/6A  20V/10.5A

As Baseus 100W 20000mAh capacity allowed about 500 minutes (or 8:20 time) of offgrid operation the ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh powerbank allows even longer 620 minutes (or 10:20 time) of power time.

Other feature of ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh Powerbank I like very mush is that it is capable of powering my ThinkPad X220/T420s laptops. Unfortunately not the ThinkPad W520 as it requires 135W minimum.

Costs

Lets now check how the prices compare to the rest of the solution. I also added additional 2 TB WD Elements 2.5 HDD as I recently passed the 90% on the ZFS pool capacity.

Solution cost with EATON 3S Mini below.

 $18  Dell Wyse 3030 LT
 $80  5 TB WD Elements 2.5 HDD
 $40  2 TB WD Elements 2.5 HDD
  $8  Lexar S47 USB 3.0 Pendrive
 $25  EATON 3S Mini 36W 2200mAh
$171  TOTAL

… and with the ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh powerbank.

 $18  Dell Wyse 3030 LT
 $80  5 TB WD Elements 2.5 HDD
 $40  2 TB WD Elements 2.5 HDD
  $8  Lexar S47 USB 3.0 Pendrive
 $69  ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh
$215  TOTAL

Summary

Core NAS cost about $146 (with additional HDD for total 7 TB of storage) and the price increased slightly to $171 with EATON 3S Mini 36W 2200mAh UPS and to $215 with ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh powerbank.

Regards.

UPDATE 1 – AA Batteries Powered UPS

While I have the topic covered I also wanted to browse the Internet once again to check if I did not missed anything … and I found the Huawei 18W BBU15-D-T AA battery powered UPS gem.

Its a very simple solution that has one 5.5mm/2.1mm input and one 5.5mm/2.1mm output.

It was also dirt cheap – I got a used one in great condition for about $10. One can add additional $10 for a set of 1.2V Ni-Mh 4 x AA battery set to make the cost complete. That makes $20 for the whole UPS solution.

… but my first attempt at using it failed. I used typical GP 2500/2700 mAh capacity batteries as shown below.

… and not matter what I tried the UPS always ended in the FAULT state.

I though it was broken or something like that so I contacted the seller to send it back … but one last idea came to check OTHER AA batteries for it – and that is what helped.

This time I used GP Pro and SANYO Eneloop AA batteries and … everything worked as it should this time.

So now You have three possible UPS solutions to power your tiny NAS solution 🙂

EOF

Tiny UPS for Tiny NAS

 

Before You start reading I must disappoint You – using Baseus 100W 20000mAh powerbank (described in this article below) would not work properly as UPS.

After some research I have described at least two working solutions in the follow up article – Tiny UPS for Tiny NAS Reloaded – available here.

It described the use of these EATON 3S Mini 36W 2200mAh UPS and ZMI QB826G 210W 25000mAh powerbank as working and reliable UPS solutions.

Below You will find original article content.

I am a big fan of building things by yourself. That also includes my NAS instead of using something prebuilt such as some Synology or QNAP NAS box. Although I must say that these small NAS devices with 2.5 disks slots like Synology DS416SLIM or QNAP TS-453S PRO look really interesting … if I could only put FreeBSD there. In the past these were my attempts at creating my low power NAS systems.

• Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server/Desktop
• Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server – DIY Backup
• Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server – Redundant Backup
• Silent Fanless Dell Wyse 3030 LT FreeBSD Server

Currently I still use low power Dell Wyse 3030 LT fanless systems with 2.5 HDD attached to is via USB cable.

Its performance is more then enough for my needs and it really draws small amount of power – about 4.5W when idle and about 10W when fully loaded … of course when the power is available. Sometimes – not often but still – the electricity is gone for like seconds or minutes – which of course makes this NAS poweroff. Sometimes the electricity is back and gone several times in short period which is the most dangerous one for the longevity of these devices.

I was thinking about adding some small UPS just to shield it from these rapid on/off electricity events but I did not wanted anything big and bulky like a regular APC brick like that one below.

While doing its service that APC is like several times larger then the NAS itself. After doing some research and sticking all the LEGO bricks together I came with an idea to use a larger … powerbank.

After some search I have found a used Baseus 100W 20000mAh device in nice condition for about $25 that is even able to charge a laptop and a phone simultaneously.

The important specs for this Baseus 100W 20000mAh powerbank are below.

They may be useful when You will be looking for other model then that one for the same purpose.

When attached – the powerbank display showed 20V/0.4A so I assume this is the mode you will be looking for.

OUTPUT  USB-C  100W     -/-   5V/3A   -/-     9V/3A  12V/3A    15V/3A  20V/5A
OUTPUT  USB-A   30W  4.5V/5A  5V/3A  5V/4.5A  9V/3A  12V/2.5A

OK – we have the power source – but we still need to connect that power to our Dell Wyse 3030 LT system.

This is where AliExpress comes to the rescue – https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001433106467.html – where I got the USB-C to 5.5×2.5mm Adapter shown below.

This is how much space whole solution takes with powerbank as UPS added.

Fully charged Baseus 100W 20000mAh powerbank is able to keep alive the Dell Wyse 3030 LT system with 5 TB WD Elements 2.5 USB 3.0 drive attached for more then 8 hours and its displaying that on its display.

I also added additional small 90 Degree USB-C to USB-C Adapter to make the USB-C cable take less space – https://aliexpress.com/item/1005006223071504.html – from here.

As for the attachment to the wall for electricity – I used a standard small USB Charger – this one had 5V/2.4A output.

It is a lot smaller then the power supply that came with the Dell Wyse 3030 LT system (the lower one).

Lets check how adding that powerbank UPS look like when it comes to cost of the solution.

 $18  Dell Wyse 3030 LT
 $80  5TB WD Elements 2.5 HDD
  $8  Lexar S47 32GB USB 3.0 Pendrive
$106  TOTAL


 $25  Baseus 100W 20000mAh
  $2  USB-C to 5.5x2.5mm Adapter
  $2  90 Degree USB-C Adapter
  $2  USB 5V/2.4A Wall Charger
  $3  USB-C Power Delivery Cable
 $34  TOTAL

So the core NAS cost about $106 while adding the powerbank UPS to it added additional $34 with total $140 for the solution.

Hope that you may find that useful in your builds 🙂

Regards.

EOF

Silent Fanless Dell Wyse 3030 LT FreeBSD Server

Why use quite outdated (released in 2016) Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminal under FreeBSD? There are probably many answers to that question. I recently started to use these for my backup purposes … and to be honest I am really pleased with them.

In the past I used to make my own boxes based on Mini ITX motherboards such as these:

• Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server/Desktop
• Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server – DIY Backup
• Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server – Redundant Backup

… and to be honest – I was pretty pleased with their service. The reason that I started to look for alternative and settled on Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminals were Pico ITX power supplies. Both of them failed somewhere between now and 2018. I got replacements from China but then these boxes (without any active cooling) started to overheat. I also tried to replace motherboards with other ones – but still had the same problem. I really wanted to avoid active cooling because it creates a lot of pointless dust. Both inside and outside the case.

My current point of view is that these used Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminals are both cheaper at buy and later at usage costs as they draw a lot less power then the Mini ITX motherboard based ones.

Dell Wyse 3030 LT

The Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminals are not that much powerful – they should be treated as Raspberry Pi boards more then like a casual mini PC. Both because of their power draw and compute power. Here is how such Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminal looks like. I put a 2.5 USB attached hard disk on top of it – its WD Elements with 5 TB capacity. The USB pendrive that is plugged into one of the front USB ports is Lexar S47 32GB USB drive. This is where FreeBSD 13.2-RC6 is installed. I will of course update it when 13.2-RELEASE is ready to rumble.

You may ask why WD Elements and its a good question. The answer is I do not care. I just sort the drives for ‘best price’ order and buy the cheapest one. The other Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminal I got has Seagate Basic Portable 2.5 USB drive instead – also 5 TB in capacity. Works the same well. Cost almost the same. I do not remember which one was better deal but they both were very close.

Ports

The Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminal has quite a few useful ports that most of them I find useful.

These are:

• (1) — 1 x USB 3.0 (front)
• (2) — 2 x USB 2.0 (front)
• (3) — 1 x Mini Jack (front)
• (4) — 1 x LAN 10/100/1000 Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 (back)
• (5) — 2 x DisplayPort (back)
• (6) — 1 x USB 2.0 (back)
• (*) — 1 x WLAN Intel AC-7265 (internal)

The hardware specs are not that great for today’s standards.

MODEL: Dell Wyse 3030 LT
  CPU: Intel Celeron N2807 2 x 1.58 GHz (2.16 GHz Turbo)
  RAM: 2 GB DDR3L (soldered on motherboard)
 eMMC: 4 GB Flash (soldered on motherboard)
 mPCI: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265

I use ZFS filesystem for my data and one may say that 2 GB RAM is not enough for ZFS needs … but OpenZFS page recommends 2 GB RAM as a minimum so I do not have to worry here.

Have enough memory: A minimum of 2GB of memory is recommended for ZFS. Additional memory is strongly recommended when the compression and deduplication features are enabled.

The source of that information comes from OpenZFS FAQ page.

In the past I have successfully run a 512 MB box with 2 x 2 TB ZFS mirror for several years. I have had zero crashes/panics/problems with it. Everything just worked like it suppose to. I also run several simple services on the same 512 MB box – like NFS and SAMBA services to export the available data to machines on the local network. The only thing I did back then was to limit the ARC usage up to 128 MB of RAM. Nothing more.

With current 2 GB RAM that I have configured ARC to be 128-256 MB with following settings in the /etc/sysctl.conf file.

# ZFS ARC TUNING
  vfs.zfs.arc.min=134217728
  vfs.zfs.arc.max=268435456

The details about that Intel Celeron N2807 CPU can be found on Intel ARK database.

Here are its specs. The most interesting ones are TDP(W).

The lscpu(1) shows following information about it.

wyse3030 % lscpu
Architecture:            amd64
Byte Order:              Little Endian
Total CPU(s):            2
Thread(s) per core:      1
Core(s) per socket:      2
Socket(s):               1
Vendor:                  GenuineIntel
CPU family:              6
Model:                   55
Model name:              Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N2807  @ 1.58GHz
Stepping:                8
L1d cache:               24K
L1i cache:               32K
L2 cache:                1024K
Flags:                   fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 cflsh ds acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pbe sse3 pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline rdrnd tsc_adjust smep erms fpcsds syscall nx rdtscp lm lahf_lm

The FreeBSD information about it from /var/run/dmesg.boot looks as follows.

CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N2807  @ 1.58GHz (1583.40-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin="GenuineIntel"  Id=0x30678  Family=0x6  Model=0x37  Stepping=8
  Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x41d8e3bf<SSE3,PCLMULQDQ,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,TSCDLT,RDRAND>
  AMD Features=0x28100800<SYSCALL,NX,RDTSCP,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x101<LAHF,Prefetch>
  Structured Extended Features=0x2282<TSCADJ,SMEP,ERMS,NFPUSG>
  VT-x: PAT,HLT,MTF,PAUSE,EPT,UG,VPID
  TSC: P-state invariant, performance statistics

Several C-states and P-states are properly supported on FreeBSD as shown below.

wyse3030 % sysctl dev.cpu.0
dev.cpu.0.temperature: 44.0C
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.throttle_log: 0
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.tjmax: 100.0C
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.resolution: 1
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.delta: 56
dev.cpu.0.cx_method: C1/hlt C2/io
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage_counters: 21488971 0
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% last 409us
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/3/104
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 2501/45000 2500/45000 2000/33977 1800/29872 1600/25926 1400/22148 1200/18525 1000/15060 800/11752
dev.cpu.0.freq: 1400
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0 _CID=none
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU0
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU

Keep in mind to load coretemp(4) module at system startup to get all needed information.

The output from sensors.sh is available below.

wyse3030 # sensors.sh

            BATTERY/AC/TIME/FAN/SPEED
------------------------------------
               dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/500 C3/3/1500
                   dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 26.04% 12.27% 61.68% last 125us
                       dev.cpu.0.freq: 498
                hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C8
                            powerd(8): running

                  SYSTEM/TEMPERATURES
------------------------------------
                dev.cpu.0.temperature: 37.0C (max: 105.0C)
                dev.cpu.1.temperature: 40.0C (max: 105.0C)
      hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 26.9C (max: 90.1C)

                   DISKS/TEMPERATURES
------------------------------------
        smart.da1.temperature_celsius: 37.0C

The biggest drawback is the lack of support for aesni(4) acceleration. Test I had made – with powerd(8) enabled – shows that its able to reach 15-16 MB/s of speed with calculating that encryption on these two cores. Its more then enough for my needs as I rarely go above 10-11 MB/s on the WiFi transfers.

If you are interested how the internals of Dell Wyse 3030 LT motherboard looks like – take a journey to David Parkinson page at Dell Wyse 3030 LT location. You will also find a lot information about other Thin Client software – often also called Terminals.

I did not bothered to unscrew mine knowing what David Parkinson shows on his site.

WiFi

As the Dell Wyse 3030 LT has the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 WiFi card from 2014 – almost a decade old WiFi card – there is a big chance that FreeBSD will flawlessly support it and at least allow 802.11n protocol and speed – as its 9 years old.

Here are some specs from Intel on that WiFi card.

… and here is the neat part 😀 – it does not work on FreeBSD – its not able to connect to WiFi access point – what were you thinking 🙂

This is what I tried at both 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz WiFi networks that are WPA2 protected.

wyse3030 # grep iwm /var/run/dmesg.boot 
iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7265> mem 0x88500000-0x88501fff at device 0.0 on pci2
iwm0: hw rev 0x210, fw ver 22.361476.0, address d0:57:7b:13:41:4c

wyse3030 # pciconf -lv iwm0
iwm0@pci0:2:0:0: class=0x028000 rev=0x59 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x095a subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x5410
    vendor = 'Intel Corporation'
    device = 'Wireless 7265'
    class = network

wyse3030 # sysctl -n net.wlan.devices
iwm0

wyse3030 # ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev $( !! )

wyse3030 # ifconfig wlan0 up

wyse3030 # ifconfig wlan0 scan
SSID/MESH ID            BSSID              CHAN RATE    S:N     INT CAPS
wifinet                 d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00    7   54M  -63:-96   100 EP   APCHANREP WPA RSN BSSLOAD HTCAP VHTCAP VHTOPMODE
wifinet                 d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02   40   54M  -80:-96   100 EP   VHTPWRENV APCHANREP WPA RSN HTCAP VHTCAP 

These are my WiFi networks that I will try to use:

• WiFi 2.4GHz – wifinet – d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00
• WiFi 5.0GHz – wifinet – d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02

Results below.

WiFi 2.4GHz

wyse3030 # wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=20, val=0, arg_len=7]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=20, val=0, arg_len=7]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=103, val=0, arg_len=128]: Operation now in progress
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-FAILED ret=-1 retry=1
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 (SSID='wifinet' freq=2442 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 (SSID='wifinet' freq=2442 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 (SSID='wifinet' freq=2442 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 (SSID='wifinet' freq=2442 MHz)
^C

WiFi 5.0GHz

wyse3030 # wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=20, val=0, arg_len=7]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=20, val=0, arg_len=7]: Invalid argument
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 (SSID='wifinet' freq=5200 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 (SSID='wifinet' freq=5200 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 (SSID='wifinet' freq=5200 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 (SSID='wifinet' freq=5200 MHz)
wlan0: Authentication with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 reason=3 locally_generated=1
BSSID d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 ignore list count incremented to 2, ignoring for 10 seconds
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="wifinet" auth_failures=1 duration=10 reason=CONN_FAILED
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="wifinet"
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 (SSID='wifinet' freq=5200 MHz)
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:07:b6:aa:bb:02 reason=3 locally_generated=1
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING 
^C

… and to be fair – I have used latest and greatest FreeBSD 13.2-RC6 (the 13.2-RELEASE is probably available now). I even installed the comms/iwmbt-firmware package hoping it would solve anything – it does not change anything.

For the record – this is how properly working WiFi connection looks like on FreeBSD.

# ifconfig wlan0 up 
# wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=20, val=0, arg_len=7]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCS80211, op=20, val=0, arg_len=7]: Invalid argument
wlan0: Trying to associate with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 (SSID='wifinet' freq=2442 MHz)
wlan0: Associated with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00
wlan0: WPA: Key negotiation completed with d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to d8:07:b6:aa:bb:00 completed [id=43 id_str=]

At this point (after you get the CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED message) you hit [CTRL]+[Z] then type bg at the prompt to keep wpa_supplicant(8) process in the background – and then dhclient wlan0 to get the IP address, default gateway and DNS servers.

The best FreeBSD can get on that box when it comes to WiFi side is Realtek RTL8188CUS tiny USB dongle … but while its 802.11n capable – the FreeBSD is only able to support 802.11g speeds on it. Details here – Realtek RTL8188CUS – USB 802.11n WiFi Review – in one of my older articles.

You now probably understand why I have these two WiFi antennas detached 🙂 – but for the record – I have tested the WiFi connection with both antennas attached to that Intel AC 7265 card.

LAN

While WiFi on FreeBSD sucks greatly the builtin LAN – Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 – works quite well with re(4) driver … but it needs one spacial quirk to work 🙂

All network connections need to be restarted at the end of the boot process to work – if you do not do that – you just do not have network connectivity at all – I was not able to track why its fucked up like that – so I went with the idea to use /etc/rc.local scripts as its already there and its really late in the boot process. Here are mine /etc/rc.local script contents that seem to workaround that fuckup well.

wyse3030 % cat /etc/rc.local
#! /bin/sh

# RESTART NETWORKING
  (
  service netif   restart 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
  service routing restart 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
  ) &

To not waste time I put both netif and routing services in the background for startup.

DisplayPort

The DisplayPort sockets just work – when attached to the 1080p monitor they just deliver. I tried only in the vt(4) console mode. I did not tried X11 mode – but I suspect that the CPU is so old that it will work flawlessly with i915kms.ko driver from graphics/drm-fbsd13-kmod package.

When it comes to early booting – set your native screen resolution in the /boot/loader.conf file as specified below.

# CONSOLE RESOLUTION # --------------------------------------------------------
  kern.vt.fb.default.mode=1920x1080    # FORCE FHD
  efi_max_resolution=1920x1080         # FORCE FHD

Also – if you (like me) like to have small/smaller font size in the terminal – this will also be helpful in the /boot/loader.conf file.

  screen.font=6x12          # USE SMALLEST FONT NO MATTER THE RESOLUTION

USB

The USB ports work as desired. Both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports work without any issues.

I currently use Lexar S47 32 GB USB tiny dongle foe FreeBSD system. I did not yet tested the builtin eMMC 4 GB flash storage space – will probably add some UPDATE about it in the future.

Data

Lets get back to the main responsibility of that box – backups. In the past my main NAS system used to have two 5 TB disks in ZFS mirror – but as I have another offsite copy and another offline copy and I also have my main copy always with me – I now find it pointless to have this single NAS mirrored. Besides – its more then 3-2-1 backup rule anyway …

As this box has 4 USB ports one can of course even create raidz ZFS pool with 3 drives for data and 1 for parity. Nothing stops you from doing that. You will get 15 TB of usable storage that way … not sure how log would it take to rebuild through. As these are SMR drives you may consider raidz2 or mirror instead. I also have some tips for ZFS on SMR Drives here.

Costs

This is the neat part … and I am not joking here. My earlier setups cost about $110 to $120 only for the case/motherboard/PSUs/RAM/etc. You needed to add disk costs to that on top. But not with this one. I got several of these Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminals for less then $18 each … and it was not a one time offer – they just cost that much now.

The disks (5 TB 2.5 USB drives) that I use also got cheaper in time and its relatively easy to get a used one for about $80. Does not matter if its Seagate or Western Digital or whatever. They are very similar cheap 5400 rpm SMR drives.

This make my new backup solution cost about $100 for a 5 TB space of storage.

Configuration

This is the main FreeBSD config /etc/rc.conf file.

wyse3030 % cat /etc/rc.conf
# BOOT/SILENCE # -------------------------------------------------------------
  rc_startmsgs=NO
  rc_info=NO

# NETWORK # ------------------------------------------------------------------
  hostname=wyse3030
  ifconfig_re0="inet 10.0.0.2/24"
  defaultrouter="10.0.0.1"
  defaultroute_delay=3
  defaultroute_carrier_delay=3
  gateway_enable=YES

# MODULES/COMMON/BASE # ------------------------------------------------------
  kld_list="${kld_list} fusefs coretemp sem cpuctl ichsmb"

# POWER # --------------------------------------------------------------------
  performance_cx_lowest=Cmax
  economy_cx_lowest=Cmax
  powerd_enable=YES
  powerd_flags="-n adaptive -a hiadaptive -b adaptive -m 100 -M 2000"

# DAEMONS # ------------------------------------------------------------------
  syslogd_flags="-ss"
  sshd_enable=YES
  zfs_enable=YES
  sendmail_enable=NO
  sendmail_submit_enable=YES
  sendmail_outbound_enable=NO
  sendmail_msp_queue_enable=NO

# OTHER # --------------------------------------------------------------------
  keyrate=fast
  virecover_enable=NO
  update_motd=NO
  hostid_enable=NO
  entropy_file=NO
  savecore_enable=NO
  clear_tmp_enable=YES
  dumpdev=AUTO

Options that can be changed anytime at /etc/sysctl.conf file below.

wyse3030 % cat /etc/sysctl.conf
# SECURITY # ------------------------------------------------------------------
  security.bsd.see_jail_proc=0
  security.bsd.unprivileged_proc_debug=0

# SECURITY/RANDOM PID # -------------------------------------------------------
  kern.randompid=1

# ANNOYING THINGS # -----------------------------------------------------------
  vfs.usermount=1
  kern.coredump=0
  hw.syscons.bell=0
  kern.vt.enable_bell=0

# ZFS ASHIFT 4k BLOCK SIZE # --------------------------------------------------
  vfs.zfs.min_auto_ashift=12

# ZFS DELETE FUCKUP TRIM # ----------------------------------------------------
  vfs.zfs.vdev.trim_max_active=1

# ZFS ARC 128MB FORCE # -------------------------------------------------------
  vfs.zfs.arc.min=134217728
  vfs.zfs.arc.max=268435456

# JAILS/ALLOW UPGRADES IN JAILS # ---------------------------------------------
  security.jail.chflags_allowed=1

# JAILS/ALLOW RAW SOCKETS # ---------------------------------------------------
  security.jail.allow_raw_sockets=1

# ALLOW idprio(8) USE BY REGULAR USER # ---------------------------------------
  security.bsd.unprivileged_idprio=1

… and last but not least (actually first :> to be read) the /boot/loader.conf file.

wyse3030 % cat /boot/loader.conf
# CONSOLE COMMON # ------------------------------------------------------------
  autoboot_delay=2          # USE '-1' => NO WAIT | USE 'NO' => INFINITE WAIT
  loader_logo=none          # LOGO POSIBILITES: fbsdbw beastiebw beastie none
  loader_menu_frame=none    # REMOVE FRAMES FROM FreeBSD BOOT MENU
  screen.font=6x12          # USE SMALLEST FONT NO MATTER THE RESOLUTION

# CONSOLE RESOLUTION # --------------------------------------------------------
  kern.vt.fb.default.mode=1920x1080    # FORCE FHD
  efi_max_resolution=1920x1080         # FORCE FHD

# MODULES # -------------------------------------------------------------------
  geom_eli_load=YES
  cryptodev_load=YES
  zfs_load=YES

# DISABLE /dev/diskid/* AND /dev/gptid/* ENTRIES FOR DISKS # ------------------
  kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable=0
  kern.geom.label.gptid.enable=0

# COLORS # --------------------------------------------------------------------
  kern.vt.color.0.rgb="#000000"
  kern.vt.color.1.rgb="#dc322f"
  kern.vt.color.2.rgb="#859900"
  kern.vt.color.3.rgb="#b58900"
  kern.vt.color.4.rgb="#268bd2"
  kern.vt.color.5.rgb="#ec0048"
  kern.vt.color.6.rgb="#2aa198"
  kern.vt.color.7.rgb="#94a3a5"
  kern.vt.color.8.rgb="#586e75"
  kern.vt.color.9.rgb="#cb4b16"
  kern.vt.color.10.rgb="#859900"
  kern.vt.color.11.rgb="#b58900"
  kern.vt.color.12.rgb="#268bd2"
  kern.vt.color.13.rgb="#d33682"
  kern.vt.color.14.rgb="#2aa198"
  kern.vt.color.15.rgb="#6c71c4"

# RACCT/RCTL RESOURCE LIMITS # ------------------------------------------------
  kern.racct.enable=1

# ZFS TUNING # ----------------------------------------------------------------
  vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=1

# POWER MANAGEMENT POWER OFF DEVICES WITHOUT ATTACHED DRIVER # ----------------
  hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3

# POWER MANAGEMENT FOR EVERY USED AHCI CHANNEL (ahcich 0-7) # -----------------
  hint.ahcich.0.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.1.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.2.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.3.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.4.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.5.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.6.pm_level=5
  hint.ahcich.7.pm_level=5

# DISABLE DESTRUCTIVE DTrace # ------------------------------------------------
  security.bsd.allow_destructive_dtrace=0

There is also this 5 TB disk drive configuration to be mentioned.

wyse3030 # gpart destroy -F da0
wyse3030 # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1m status=progress count=10
wyse3030 # gpart create -s GPT da0
wyse3030 # gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 4k da0
wyse3030 # geli init -s 4096 da0p1
wyse3030 # geli attach da0p1

Why I use password based encryption and not based on key? If someone would steal that device then with attached key on – for example – USB drive – all the data would be accessible – and all encryption and effort would be lost. With password based encryption whoever steals the devices gets some nice /dev/random input from my disk because its encrypted.

In the end these boxes do not hang by themselves and when there is power outage – its not that common like twice a week. Its more like once a quarter – I do not mind typing my password once in a quarter to make my data safe from people that should not be allowed to access it.

ZFS Pool Configuration

I did not used anything spectacular for ZFS configuration – just disabled atime and enabled compression that would save some space. I also increased the recordsize to 1M so the compressratio would be a little better … but nothing more to be honest.

wyse3030 # zpool history wd
History for 'wd':
2023-04-05.14:46:01 zpool create wd /dev/da0p1.eli
2023-04-05.14:46:07 zfs set compression=zstd wd
2023-04-05.14:46:12 zfs set atime=off wd
2023-04-05.14:46:15 zfs set recordsize=1m wd
2023-04-05.14:51:46 zfs create wd/data
2023-04-05.14:51:50 zfs set mountpoint=none wd
2023-04-05.14:52:00 zfs set mountpoint=/data wd/data

As you probably guessed the wd name is for the Western Digital 5 TB drive. If you are curious (and you probably are) the second ZFS pool is called seagate 🙂

Last time I used the LZ4 compression for the ZFS pool. Not I use the ZSTD compression and the compressratio improved from 1.04 to 1.07 – almost twice more efficient.

wyse3030 % zfs get compressratio
NAME                                      PROPERTY       VALUE  SOURCE
wd                                        compressratio  1.07x  -
wd/data                                   compressratio  1.07x  -

One may think that 7% of more data space is almost ‘non-existent’ – think again. When it comes to terabytes it makes a big difference. In my case when my real data takes 4.2 TB and compressed one takes 3.9 TB its … 245 GB of space. For free. Thank you ZFS.

Quirks

The ‘quirks’ are things that need to be done differently then usual to make the device ‘happy’ – to make it work the way we want.

One of the Dell Wyse 3030 LT quirks is its bot process … it does not need any additional configuration – I just want to mention it – so you will not be stressed about it. After the FreeBSD loader(8) menu there is slight pause before continuing into the ‘rest’ of the boot process. Its several seconds long and its harmless. Here is how it looks on attached screen.

Power Usage Comparison

So its dirt cheap … and takes HALF of the power then my previews Mini ITX solution. The Mini ITX based systems used about 10.4 W of power when at idle state.

After measuring the Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminal power consumption with a kill-a-watt physical device – its only about 4.5 W only … and this is with 5 TB of 2.5 disk attached at idle state.

Another interesting fact is that I used the same ‘external’ power supply that I used for these Mini ITX boxes.

Its 2.5A at 12V (which means 30 W)- exactly what a Dell Wyse 3030 LT terminal needs – according to its specification. As you can see from the photo above – the official power supply – while quite similar in size – needs a lot more space because of the additional 3-pin power cord – which is quite thick and takes a lot more space.

As in the past – I used python(1) [1] processes to load the CPU and dd(8) commands to load the drives I/O subsystem.

[1] # echo '999999999999999999 ** 999999999999999999' | python
[2] # dd if=/dev/da0  of=/dev/null  bs=1m
[3] # dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/FILE bs=1m

I will also include older Mini ITX based system measurements.

BOX        POWER  CPU          I/O
Wyse3030   3.8 W  IDLE         IDLE
MiniITX   10.5 W  IDLE         IDLE


BOX        POWER  CPU          I/O
Wyse3030  10.3 W  8 Thread(s)  3 DISK READ Thread(s) + 3 DISK WRITE Thread(s)
MiniITX   17.8 W  8 Thread(s)  3 DISK READ Thread(s) + 3 DISK WRITE Thread(s)

So after cutting CAPEX costs from about $110 to $15 I also lowered the OPEX price in half.

What can I say … I really appreciate and like the price/performance ratio 🙂

Cloud Storage Costs Comparison

I am not a fan of cloud based storage – its just damn overpriced to say the least.

In the past I have made multiple calculations about cloud storage costs and it will be no different this time. We need to assume some cost of 1kWh of power. In Poland its about $0.25 for 1kWh which means running a device that draws 1000 Watts for entire hour.

Assuming that our Dell Wyse 3030 LT uses about 4.5W all the time it would make the following costs.

  COST  TIME 
 $0.03  1 DAY(s)
 $9.96  1 YEAR(s)
$29.88  3 YEAR(s)
$49.80  5 YEAR(s)

Combining that with server cost ($100) we get TCO for our self hosted 5TB storage service.

COST  TIME
$110  1 YEAR(s)
$130  3 YEAR(s)
$150  5 YEAR(s)

This time after searching for cheapest cloud based storage I found these services.

• Amazon Drive
• Amazon S3 Glacier Storage
• Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
• Google One
• Dropbox Basic
  

Here is its cost summarized for 1 year period for 5TB of data.

PRICE  TIME       SERVICE
 $300  1 YEAR(s)  Amazon Drive
 $310  1 YEAR(s)  Google One
 $240  1 YEAR(s)  Amazon S3 Glacier Storage
 $450  1 YEAR(s)  Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
 $360  1 YEAR(s)  Dropbox Basic

For the Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage I assumed average between upload/download price because upload is two times cheaper then download.

Here is its cost summarized for 5 year period for 5 TB of data.

PRICE  TIME       SERVICE
 $150  5 YEAR(s)  Dell Wyse 3030 LT + 5 TB USB 2.5 Drive
 $230  5 YEAR(s)  Dell Wyse 3030 LT + 5 TB USB 2.5 Drive (assuming drive failed)
$1500  5 YEAR(s)  Amazon Drive
$1550  5 YEAR(s)  Google One
$1200  5 YEAR(s)  Amazon S3 Glacier Storage
$2250  5 YEAR(s)  Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
$1800  5 YEAR(s)  Dropbox Basic

… but there is also a catch here. Recently I was able to get a lifetime offer for 1 TB of cloud storage. It cost me about $170 for that 1 TB.

This is where it gets interesting – for 5 TB we would have to pay $850 for lifetime cloud storage. Lets calculate where the ‘personal’ NAS is comparable to ‘lifetime’ cloud storage.

PRICE   TIME       SERVICE
 $230   5 YEAR(s)  Dell Wyse 3030 LT + 5 TB USB 2.5 Drive => assuming drive failed 1 time(s)
 $460  10 YEAR(s)  Dell Wyse 3030 LT + 5 TB USB 2.5 Drive => assuming drive failed 2 time(s)
 $690  15 YEAR(s)  Dell Wyse 3030 LT + 5 TB USB 2.5 Drive => assuming drive failed 3 time(s)
 $920  20 YEAR(s)  Dell Wyse 3030 LT + 5 TB USB 2.5 Drive => assuming drive failed 4 time(s)
 $850  UNLIMITED   {5TB unlimited time cloud vendor}

So … it will take you about 20 years of your life (and an assumption that a drive will fail every 5 years with 4 drive fails total) to make it less expensive then the unlimited cloud storage. To be honest – I would get such unlimited cloud storage for most important files and documents for example in 1 TB or less size. Keep an encrypted backup copy the most important files and you are doing better then the classic 3-2-1 backup rule … assuming that you already have one online and one offline backup and also one onsite backup and one offsite backup … and at least two different medium types used 🙂

Drawbacks

WiFi is not supported and network requires restart after boot. Besides these I did not find any other issues.

EOF

Epitaph to Laptops

This article was in my ‘TODO’ list since almost start of this blog several years ago. Usually I try to focus on positive side of things but this article is one way highway quite the opposite way. If you do not want do lose your good attitude then please do not read further. Nothing good awaits you at the end for you unfortunately. The song of King Crimson – Epitaph is appropriate tune here. You have been warned.

Naive

When I was younger I though that World only gets better. Things are improved. People live better and longer. Cars broke less frequently and need less maintenance. Computers not only go faster and draw less power but they become more usable and allow people to be more productive because of new features introduced.

Unfortunately it’s not true. Some things are improving but other get forgotten or get worse. Depending on the current geopolitical situation people live better or worse. Cars are more complicated then ever so they broke more and are now also often disturbed by software and firmware updates – not to mention bugs and security issues. It’s harder today to find a car (even used one) that is reliable, cheap in maintenance and also with engine not crippled by for example EURO 7 regulations enforced by EU. Computers are faster … or at least they have more CPU cores and draw some less power but one thing in computing went entirely wrong way.

Laptops

It’s not about their CPUs or RAM. Screens also got better – they are brighter then ever – and FullHD 1920×1080 resolution finally become the standard. Some manufacturers went even further with 16:10 or even 3:2 screen ratios. Larger touchpads with support for multi touch and gestures are also very often and welcome. There is however one aspect that ALL laptop manufacturers got entirely wrong.

Keyboards

The first laptop I got was Dell Latitude C600.

With its 7-row keyboard and functional INS/DEL HOME/END PGUP/PGDN layout at the top right side probably fixed me for life.

This is the most important fragment I am talking about.

It was so obvious for me that it was there – providing standard cursor position manipulation without taking all the space that a TKL (tenkeyless) keyboard takes. Its 1024×768 screen resolution may seem very ancient today but it was higher then the default consensus at 800×600 one back then.

Besides the great keyboard that Dell laptop also provided other useful feature – modularity. It had two universal bays for things like:

• batteries
• CD-ROM or CD-RW drive
• floppy drive

You could put two batteries to maximize battery power or put CD-RW drive instead of battery to get other functionality. The two batteries also meant that you could run this laptop as long as you want if you only had enough charged batteries. This was available almost two decades ago. 19 years to be precise. My currently favorite FreeBSD operating system also run well on it with Fluxbox on X11 display server.

In that time many laptop manufacturers provided both more productive 7-row keyboard and modularity … or at least business oriented ones … even with SUN SPARC or IBM POWER CPUs. The IBM RS-6000 POWERbook is shown below.

… and the Tadpole SPARCbook also.

Several years later I went for upgrade and got the Dell Latitude D630 laptop with successful Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 1400×900 screen which provided so much more screen space and flexibility.

Besides the obvious 7-row keyboard its creators got great idea that extended main battery would extend in the front of the laptop instead of the back. That had two implications. First – you got a lot of usable ports at the back. Second – you got additional elegant palm rest on the front. Both Dell D630 batteries shown below.

Besides this ‘frontal’ idea it also had universal UltraBay slot on the side which similarly to the earlier Dell C600 allowed one of the following accessories:

• CD-RW or DVD-RW drive
• additional bay battery

Thanks to that you could extend the battery life of your laptop to about 8 hours … even on FreeBSD with its limited power management back then. You could also get additional batteries to work as long as you like of course. It was introduced in 2007. I even run OpenSolaris on that laptop for some time and all hardware was fully supported. The only problem OpenSolaris had back then is the same one as OpenIndiana has now. Very small amount of packages of additional software. Back then FreeBSD provided most software that was available on Linux but OpenSolaris was in its own limited league. I really liked OpenSolaris WiFi management with dladm(1M) tho.

After some time my attention went into revolutionary Lenovo ThinkPad X300 with custom low power Core 2 Duo L7100 CPU designed by Intel only for this model.

It was as thin and light as Apple MacBook Air while providing same functionality and modularity as other Latitude and ThinkPad laptops. Same as my previous laptop it had ‘main’ and ‘additional’ battery interchangeable with the DVD-RW drive. It had awesome speakers. Never had THAT GOOD speakers in laptop again as they were ThinkPad X300.

After I started my work at new employer I got Dell Latitude E6400 so Lenovo ThinkPad X300 became kinda redundant.

That Dell was NOT as sturdy or reliable as magnesium body Dell D630 but it had the most important feature – the oldschool 7-row keyboard.

Life went by and some time later I needed to take a look at something newer. At my work I got myself in the position of being responsible for selection of a laptop that would be successor for the Dell Latitude E6400 that we had. After checking what is available I frighted for Lenovo ThinkPad W520 back then … and I even succeeded … and failed at the same time.

I got approval for my choice for entire department … but the corporate process to make it happening took so long that Lenovo stopped offering ThinkPad W520 and started shipping its successor ThinkPad W530. I was really sad by that fact – the ThinkPad W530 was the first Lenovo laptop with new ‘island’ type keyboard instead of the classic 7-row keyboard.

The so much appreciated and needed INS/DEL HOME/END PGUP/PGDN block was gone … forever. I thought that maybe the World is ‘right’ and I am ‘wrong’. For the next 3 years I have tried to ‘migrate’ mentally with my ‘muscle memory’ to the new island keyboard layout … unsuccessfully. The only thing that went well was … ThinkPad W530 warranty keyboard replacement because the key with letter ‘E’ failed and fell off.

It was obvious for me that I need to get other laptop – a one with 7-row keyboard layout. Today I would probably just reflash the ThinkPad W530 Embedded Controller with custom firmware written by Hamish Coleman and put there ThinkPad W520 keyboard there but that option was not available back then. I also encourage you to watch the Hamish Coleman speech My Personal Fight Against the Modern Laptop from 2017.

After checking what laptops the World has to offer … I was disappointed. Since 2012 not a single laptop manufacturer offered a laptop with 7-row keyboard. Zero. Nada. Zip. None. I decided to take a look in the past instead. The last Dell Latitude models that got the 7-row keyboard were E6410 for 14″ or 6510 for 15″ screen – were introduced in 2010. Lenovo with its X220/T420/T420s/T520/W520 lineup were from 2011 – survived a year longer. As I got used to 14 inches I opted for ThinkPad T420s (slimmer and lighter ThinkPad T420 version).

With its 1600×900 screen and also my usual two batteries setup (with one being placed in the UltraBay) It was pleasure to use (and carry as it was quite light also).

In the mean time it was needed for me to pick up newer laptop at my employee. Knowing what market has to offer I only wanted the laptop to be light and small and that it should have FullHD 1920×1080 resolution screen … and my demands were met. I got Dell Latitude E7280 laptop … with GLARE touch capable FullHD screen. Great …

As you can see it was running Windows and my ex-company policy was very simple here. Windows or GTFO. For the first several years – when my ex-company was not that big I was able to work more productive with FreeBSD on that ThinkPad W530. Unfortunately that ex-employer grown to the ‘corporation’ level too much and that ruined many things. After having ThinkPad W530 I did not expected much from new Dell but it got my disappointment to a whole new level. Take a look at the top right part of its keyboard.

Besides the fact that INSERT key is ‘shared under the F12 button and I need to use now the FN key to send it each time is another level of PITA … but placing the keyboard shortcut to DISABLE WIFI one key next really got me pissed. I do not have to tell you how many times instead if just pressing INSERT key I disconnected my WiFi card which also meant disconnecting VPN and all the tasks that I had in place … not to mention how much time it takes to first reconnect WiFi and then to reconnect again to the VPN … but the next key to the right is SUSPEND – which I also got several times while only trying to use INSERT. Awesome. Even better. Also – did you notice where is the POWER button? Yes – I also lost part of my work several times because of that. Probably Dell Latitude E7280 was my worst laptop experience.

Some may wonder why I use INSERT so much? I got used to copy-paste with SHIFT-INSERT and CTRL-SHIFT-INSERT shortcuts – this is the guilty one I suppose.

Some time later – as size and weight was not an issue – the larger FullHD 1920×1080 screen equipped ThinkPad T520 laptop got my attention. I did not needed the dedicated graphics card of ThinkPad W520 but there were two drawbacks comparing to ThinkPad W520. Four physical CPU cores and USB 3.0 ports. With current JavaScript overblown web pages World I welcome the fact that ThinkPad W520 can hold 32 GB of RAM. It was huge amount in 2011 when it was released and it is more then enough now. As you probably guessed I got the ThinkPad W520 laptop.

It was the best upgrade ever. After replacing the thermal paste as described in my older Classic ThinkPad Thermal Paste Change article I finally felt like at home again. Its not possible to add additional battery into the UltraBay slot as only DVD-RW or SATA HDD caddy are allowed – but with extended battery I get about 5+ hours of battery time – more then needed.

Fast forward to today … I am running 11 years old ThinkPad W520 laptop and looking at what is available – I do not see any perspectives on what could be my next daily driver. All manufacturers decided to abandon the productive 7-row keyboard in order to sell ‘island’ type keyboard equipped laptops. Some of them even went completely insane as they now add a POWER button on the top right keyboard key. Insanity.

The only thing a reasonable user can do is to disable it in the software to not accidentally lost its work.

For some time I believed that Lenovo would make something more from its Retro ThinkPad initiative that allowed ThinkPad 25th Anniversary Edition to see the light of day … but that also not happened.

This slightly modified ThinkPad T470 had dull dark FullHD screen and only one version available. It was also produced in only 5000 pieces … worldwide. It was in 2017 and fast forward 5 years nothing more has happened as we are in 2022 now. Also because only 5000 of them were created its almost impossible to get a used one.

Some people took the matters in their hands and started to make their own modern and modified ThinkPad variations. The most known ones are ThinkPad T62 and ThinkPad X330 with replaced high resolution screens and sometimes even thin bevels along with new hardware underneath of course.

Even today the ThinkPad W520 is quite fast machine. The FreeBSD kernel compilation takes about 600 seconds. On the fresh brand new System76 laptop with also 4 core Intel i7-1165G7 CPU and same 32 GB RAM it takes 300 seconds. Keeping in mind that there are 11 years between these laptops this does not seem that much to be honest.

About quarter ago I changed my employer and got new business laptop – the brand new ThinkPad T14 GEN 1 one.

It has the same keyboard layout as ThinkPad W530 which is kinda good remembering how fucked up was the Dell Latitude E7280. The biggest issue with these keyboards (T14/W530) is the lack of empty space between ESC and F1 keys. If you switch desktops with ALT-F1 to ALT-F4 keys then you need to ‘waste’ some more time to make sure you are not doing the ALT-ESC shortcut which is for something entirely else. Its also good to be back on X11 as my new employer allows you to choose RHEL instead of Windows.

Back to ‘personal’ laptops – if my ThinkPad W520 would break I would just get another one … and another … or ThinkPad T520 if W520 would not be available. If for some reason I would not be able to use them anymore I would probably get that:

• cheapest laptop with enough cores/RAM and FullHD screen
• wireless “tenkeyless” keyboard in front of that laptop

Maybe I will even put that ‘proper’ keyboard on top of the builtin one to save space.

It will take little more space but at least it will be usable and productive.

Generation Lost in the Bazaar

For long time I assumed that a lot other people also lack that keyboard layout. Seems I was partially wrong. One of my mates realize me that a lot of people grown up even without ever using the INS/DEL HOME/END PGUP/PGDN layout. I will quote him below.

I didn’t know I was raised without those keys!
I mean, they were there but I wasn’t taught how to use them properly.
And now it seems we can’t find them so frequently…

If like me you went to school in Poland you would probably know (or at least recall a little) a poem of Polish poet Józef Ignacy Kraszewski titled called Birds in a Cage. Let me quote it for you here as its not that long.

Birds in a Cage
‘Why do you weep?’ a young canary said to an old canary,
‘You are better off now in a cage than you were in the fields.’
‘You were born in it,’ said the old one, ‘so I forgive you;
I was once free but now I’m in a cage and that is why I am weeping.’

Why do I quote it here? Because its very similar to the situation of new laptops available now. Those who do not know the oldschool modular laptops with 7-row keyboards are kinda born in a cage. They pick their MacBook or latest ThinkPad X1 Carbon machines with island keyboard layouts and believe that these are the best possible choices. Its was not always like that.

Future

I do not see the (laptops) future in bright lights. I like what PINE64 PineBook or Framework Laptop bring to the table but on the keyboard side … its still the island type dark ages.

References

I am not the only one that feels cheated by the industry. If you are like me here is some more fuel for your nostalgia.

• Fucking Laptops
• My Personal Fight Against the Modern Laptop
• Why I Went Back to Using ThinkPad from 2012
• FrankenPad T25 with Quad Core CPU and UHD LCD Panel

Regards.

Quare FreeBSD?

I really wanted to make this article short … but I failed miserably. At least I tried to organize it well so one may get back to it after ‘some’ reading because its not a short lecture. I wanted to title it Why FreeBSD? but when you type that into your favorite duck.com search engine there are so many similar articles. I wanted it to have distinguished and unique name so I used Latin word for ‘why‘ which is ‘quare‘.

What FreeBSD can offer you that other operating systems does not? From all of the operating systems I used I find FreeBSD to suck the least. This post is not here to convince you to use or try FreeBSD – this you will have to do by yourself. This article will show you why FreeBSD is valuable or better alternative to other operating systems and is definitely not dying.

This is the Table of Contents for this article.

• Base System
• ZFS Boot Environments
• Rescue
• Audio
• Jails
• Bhyve
• FreeBSD Ports Infrastructure
• Updating/Building from Source
• Storage
• Init System
• Linux Binary Compatibility
• Simplicity
• Evolution Instead Rewriting
• Documentation
• Community
• Closing Thoughts
• External Discussions

Base System

When you install a Linux system its just a bunch of RPM or DEB packages. For example of you install CentOS 7.8 Minimal variant you end up with several hundred RPM packages installed. After a week or month many of these packages will get updates sometimes making this CentOS system unusable or even unbootable (recent GRUB Boothole problem for example). On the contrary FreeBSD comes with a Base System concept. This means that when you install FreeBSD you install a minimal system as a whole. No packages or subsystems to be separately updated. Just whole Base System. That means that /boot /bin /sbin /usr /etc /lib /libexec /rescue directories are untouchable by any packages. When you decide to install packages (or build them using FreeBSD Ports) they will all fall into the /usr/local prefix. That means /usr/local/etc for configuration. The /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin directories for binaries. The /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/libexec for libraries and so on. The FreeBSD Base System kernel modules are kept in the same dir along with the kernel in the /boot/kernel directory. To make things tidy all kernel modules that are provided by packages go into the /boot/modules dir. Everything has its place and its separated.

That is separation between Base System binaries (at /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin dirs) and Third Party Packages maintained by pkg(8) and are located at /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin dirs. We all know differences between bin (user) and sbin (root) binaries but in FreeBSD there is also another more UFS related separation. When there was only UFS filesystem in the FreeBSD world the /bin and /sbin binaries were available at boot after the root (/) filesystem was mounted and yet before /usr  filesystem was mounted – this is historical (and still useful in the UFS setups) distinction dating to old UNIX days. In ZFS setups it does not matter as all files are on ZFS pool anyway.

Illustration of the Base System / dir and optional for third party applications /usr/local dir.

The FreeBSD Base System separation also helps with another thing – if any package gets the ‘great’ idea to install new compiler named cc and override the default system compiler … or to add libraries/includes in such a way that makes it super hard to get back into a working system. If some random FreeBSD package would add libc.so to /usr/local/lib dir then you are covered and not prevented from running programs as usual because FreeBSD system binaries are linked to stuff in /usr/lib dir. This is why there is PATH variable on UNIX systems (and FreeBSD as well) to set which directories should be searched for binaries first. On FreeBSD by default its set search Base System binaries dirs first and then Third Party Packages later.

You can update (or not) the Base System separately from the installed packages with freebsd-update(8) command when using RELEASE or by recompiling with make buildworld and make installworld commands when using STABLE/CURRENT systems. When it comes to packages you can update them using the pkg(8) tool or portmaster when building from FreeBSD Ports tree under /usr/ports dir. That means that any packages updates will not touch your FreeBSD Base System at all. For example when you mess up (and I have done that in the beginning of my FreeBSD journey) the compiled ports and packages and you want to start over the only thing you have to do is remove /usr/local and /boot/modules and /var/db/pkg directories. That’s it. You are just reverted to your Base System and can start over. This is just not possible when using Linux system. Even with Gentoo that many concepts are based on FreeBSD ideas does not have Base System feature. This Base System also have additional feature. Because its separated from packages version no one stops you from running oldshool FreeBSD 9.0 from 2012 and install there latest Firefox 80 or LibreOffice 7.0. You can not install latest Firefox on Ubuntu from 2012 …

One may be ‘afraid’ that such Base System independent from installed packages would take more space but nothing far more from the truth. The fresh installed FreeBSD 12.1 system uses less then 1 GB of disk space and takes less then 75 MB of RAM with sshd(8) running. For the comparison fresh CentOS 7.8 install with ‘Minimal’ set chosen takes 1.1 GB of disk space and uses more then 100 MB RAM with sshd(8) running. Such CentOS system is really naked and really needs more packages to be usable while FreeBSD with its Base System is far more capable and powerful and comes along with builtin latest version of LLVM/CLANG compiler suite for example.

More on the Base System topic:

• https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/03
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/dirstructure.html
• https://man.freebsd.org/hier
• https://man.freebsd.org/freebsd-version
• https://man.freebsd.org/portmaster

ZFS Boot Environments

I have talked about this many times and probably one time too less because Linux world still ignores this bless. Having ZFS Boot Environments its such a game changer that once you realize how powerful it is you will never want to use a system that does not support it. The idea is that you can snapshot a running system at any moment of time and then reboot into that moment (or snapshot) if something happened. Its perfect solution for upgrade or changes to the system. The FreeBSD systems are already well ‘protected’ from problems arising after updating the packages but ZFS Boot Environments takes this to a whole new level.

Like in the movie Groundhog Day (1993) with ZFS Boot Environments you will have limitless chances to get your shit together. Even the Base System updates and changes are protected by it. You can even transport that Boot Environment by using zfs send and zfs recv commands to other system … or propagate it on many systems. You can create Jails containers from it … or install new version of FreeBSD in the new Boot Environment and reboot into it while still having your older ‘production’ system untouched.

More on the ZFS Boot Environments topic:

• https://is.gd/BECTL
• UFS Boot Environments
• UFS Boot Environments for ARM
• Upgrade FreeBSD with ZFS Boot Environments
• https://man.freebsd.org/beadm
• https://man.freebsd.org/bectl

Rescue

When you really mess up to the point that even Base System concept or ZFS Boot Environments feature did not stopped you from killing your FreeBSD installation then there is one more level of rescue … the Rescue subsystem.

You have about 150 statically linked binaries available at your disposal for the rescue mission of that FreeBSD installation. You probably think now that if its so many binaries then it probably takes a lot of space … nothing far more from the truth. Its actually one static binary with hardlinks … and it takes whooping 11 MB of disk space.

FreeBSD # ls -lh /rescue | head -5
total 1118446
-r-xr-xr-x  146 root  wheel    11M 2020.02.19 21:10 [
-r-xr-xr-x  146 root  wheel    11M 2020.02.19 21:10 bectl
-r-xr-xr-x  146 root  wheel    11M 2020.02.19 21:10 bsdlabel
-r-xr-xr-x  146 root  wheel    11M 2020.02.19 21:10 bunzip2

They Rescue subsystem even contains such binaries as bectl(8) for ZFS Boot Environments management or zfs(8) and zpool(8) commands for the ZFS filesystem. Here is complete list of these binaries.

FreeBSD # ls /rescue
[           dd               fsck_ffs      init       mdmfs          ping      rtsol        unlink
bectl       devfs            fsck_msdosfs  ipf        mkdir          ping6     savecore     unlzma
bsdlabel    df               fsck_ufs      iscsictl   mknod          pkill     sed          unxz
bunzip2     dhclient         fsdb          iscsid     more           poweroff  setfacl      unzstd
bzcat       dhclient-script  fsirand       kenv       mount          ps        sh           vi
bzip2       disklabel        gbde          kill       mount_cd9660   pwd       shutdown     whoami
camcontrol  dmesg            geom          kldconfig  mount_msdosfs  rcorder   sleep        xz
cat         dump             getfacl       kldload    mount_nfs      rdump     spppcontrol  xzcat
ccdconfig   dumpfs           glabel        kldstat    mount_nullfs   realpath  stty         zcat
chflags     dumpon           gpart         kldunload  mount_udf      reboot    swapon       zdb
chgrp       echo             groups        ldconfig   mount_unionfs  red       sync         zfs
chio        ed               gunzip        less       mt             rescue    sysctl       zpool
chmod       ex               gzcat         link       mv             restore   tail         zstd
chown       expr             gzip          ln         nc             rm        tar          zstdcat
chroot      fastboot         halt          ls         newfs          rmdir     tcsh         zstdmt
clri        fasthalt         head          lzcat      newfs_msdos    route     tee          
cp          fdisk            hostname      lzma       nextboot       routed    test         
csh         fsck             id            md5        nos-tun        rrestore  tunefs       
date        fsck_4.2bsd      ifconfig      mdconfig   pgrep          rtquery   umount   

More on the Rescue topic:

• https://man.freebsd.org/rescue
• https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/operating-systems/freebsd-rescue-system/
• http://wiki.euserv.com/index.php/Manual_FreeBSD_Rescue_System/en

Audio

Not many people expect from FreeBSD to shine in that department but it shines a lot here and not from yesterday but from decades. Remember when Linux got rid of the old OSS subsystem with one channel and came up with ‘great’ idea to write ALSA? I remember because I used Linux back then. Disaster is very polite word to describe Linux audio stack back then … and then PulseAudio came and whole Linux audio system got much worse. Back then because of that one OSS channel and many ALSA channels meant that ONLY ONE application with OSS backend could do the sound (for example WINE). But if another application would want to ‘make’ sound using OSS and you already have WINE started then it will be soundless because that one and only OSS channel was already taken. And remember that ALSA was so bad back then that KDE or GNOME made their own sound daemons mixing audio in userspace that were incompatible with each other. That means if you used KDE and GNOME apps back then you could have sound from GNOME apps but not from KDE apps or vice versa. One big fucking audio hell on Linux.

Lets get back to FreeBSD audio then. What FreeBSD offered? A whooping 256 OSS channels mixed live in kernel for low latency. Everything audio related just worked out of the box – and still works today. You could have WINE or KDE/GNOME sound backends attached to their OSS channels and also ALSA apps getting their sound device without a problem. Even when you plugged a 5.1 surround system into FreeBSD it worked out of the box without any configuration and applications were able to use it immediately. That FreeBSD audio supremacy remains today as PulseAudio sound mixing in userspace while generally working incorporates large latency on Linux compared to in kernel FreeBSD mixing with low latency.

Comrade meka suggested that FreeBSD is also the only OS which has virtual_oss that allows mixing/resampling/compressing in user space and allows one to have Bluetooth headphones and USB microphone represented as single sound card.

More on the Audio topic:

• https://freebsd.org/doc/en/books/arch-handbook/oss.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/sound-setup.html
• https://man.freebsd.org/sound
• https://papers.freebsd.org/2019/fosdem/mekic-audio_studio/
• https://wiki.freebsd.org/Sound

Jails

The FreeBSD Jails are one of the oldest OS Level Virtualization implementations dating back to 1999. Even the Solaris Zones/Containers came five years later in 2004.

After Docker was introduced in Linux the term OS Level Virtualization became less used to the Containers term and now the FreeBSD Jails along with Solaris Zones/Containers are named 1st generation containers. But that naming nomenclature change does not make FreeBSD Jails less powerful. They are also really brain dead simple to use. You just need a directory – for example /jail/nextcloud – where you will extract the FreeBSD Base System for desired release version – for example base.txz from 12.1-RELEASE and create the Jail config in the /etc/jail.conf file as shown below.

FreeBSD # mkdir -p /jail/nextcloud
FreeBSD # fetch -o - http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/12.1-RELEASE/base.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /jail/nextcloud
FreeBSD # cat /etc/jail.conf
nextcloud {
  host.hostname = nextcloud.local;
  ip4.addr = 10.0.0.100;
  path = /jail/nextcloud;
}

Now you can start you Jail right away.

FreeBSD # service jail onestart nextcloud
Starting jails: nextcloud.

Voila! Your FreeBSD Jail is already running.

FreeBSD # jls
   JID  IP Address      Hostname                      Path
     1  10.0.0.100      nextcloud.local               /jail/nextcloud

You can of course have a trimmed down version of FreeBSD Base System in the Jail if that is needed. The ZFS filesystem also helps here greatly because with zfs clone only your ‘base’ Jail will take space and only the changes you make to Jails created from it. Thanks to other FreeBSD subsystem – the Linux Binary Compatibility – you can also create a Linux Jail – for example running Devuan or Ubuntu Jail.

The FreeBSD Jails are also very lightweight. You can boot and use about 1000 FreeBSD Jails on a single FreeBSD system with 4 GB RAM.

They are also very easy to debug and troubleshoot comparing even to plain Docker – not to even mention Kubernetes which requires whole team of highly skilled people to maintain.

The FreeBSD Jails may be configured/managed only by the Base System utilities such as jls(8)/jexec(8) but you can also select from many third party Jail management frameworks. From all available ones I would choose BastilleBSD because of their modern approach and many ready to use templates for all needed use cases.

If you want to check all the Jails features feel free to check the FreeBSD Jails Containers article.

More on the Jails topic:

• https://freebsd.org/handbook/jails.html
• https://man.freebsd.org/jail
• https://man.freebsd.org/jail.conf
• https://man.freebsd.org/jls
• https://man.freebsd.org/jexec
• https://bastillebsd.org
• https://web.archive.org/web/20170126214625/http://ivoras.sharanet.org/blog/tree/2009-10-20.the-night-of-1000-jails.html
• https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/setting-up-a-debian-linux-jail-on-freebsd.68434/

Bhyve

FreeBSD – same as Linux or any other respected operating system – comes with its own written virtualization hypervisor. On the FreeBSD land this native solution is called Bhyve (and spelled bee hive).

In the terms of features its similar to KVM/XEN/VMware/VirtualBox.

The only thing that its lacking is the Live Migration feature. Its in the works as the Save/Resume feature is in the testing and will be merged soon.

Besides that – its performance is on par or similar to the mentioned competition. In the end – they all use the same AMD/Intel CPU features that allow virtualization on x86 land.

If You want to check Bhyve hypervisor in all its glory – feel free to check the FreeBSD Bhyve Virtualization article.

Alternatively FreeBSD also supports XEN (as dom0) and VirtualBox hypervisors if Bhyve does not suit your needs.

More on the Bhyve topic:

• https://freebsd.org/handbook/virtualization-host-bhyve.html
• https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve
• https://man.freebsd.org/bhyve/8

FreeBSD Ports Infrastructure

This is one of another examples why FreeBSD rocks that much. When you install Ubuntu or CentOS in some version there is chance that you will end up with not latest versions of packages but with versions that were quite up-to-date when this distribution version was released. Its especially visible in the CentOS world (and its upstream enterprise source system from Red Hat) where packages are quite up-to-date when .0 (dot zero) release is published but are VERY outdated when .8 or .9 incarnation of that release is available. Not to even mention that Firefox for example is released every month …

As I said before when describing the FreeBSD Base System the FreeBSD Ports (and packages built from it available through pkg(8) command) are independent. That means that third party software from FreeBSD Ports is almost always up-to-date (or very close to it). You can even check it on the repology.org site for the details. Below you will find a ‘snapshot’ of the repology.org stats from time of writing this article. The ‘online’ table is very long so I copy/pasted just the systems relevant to the article.

One of the other advantages of FreeBSD Ports is that it offers really MASSIVE amount of software counting 40354 ports when writing this article and still rising. Amount of ready to be installed packages are little smaller with more then 32000 available.

I once migrated for a while to OpenSolaris in 2009 on my Dell Latitude D630 laptop because I really liked all the Solaris features (including ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments that were not available on FreeBSD back then) and the OpenSolaris GNOME based desktop was pretty nice back then even with Time Slider feature for ZFS snapshots in the Nautilus file manager. I got working WiFi connection, sound was working, generally everything on my laptop was supported and working with OpenSolaris … but there was no software. Of course ‘large’ projects like GIMP or OpenOffice was available even in the default pkg(8) repository but not much else. There was less then 4000 packages back then on OpenSolaris while about 25000 packages on FreeBSD if I recall correctly.

You can also easily browse available FreeBSD Ports (and its options) on the web by using the https://freshports.org/ page.

The count of FreeBSD Ports is one thing, the features is another. No matter which Linux distribution you are using you will find a software that was compiled and shipped without that needed flag that you desperately need. If you find such software on FreeBSD it ‘hurts’ only for a moment because you can VERY EASILY recompile that software with needed options and replace that ‘default’ package with yours. For example the FreeBSD project is afraid to provide packages of Lame because of existing MP3 patents, so multimedia/ffmpeg package is built without MP3 support (with --disable-libmp3lame flag). That is why I have my own audio/lame and multimedia/ffmpeg packages built with my configure options and that is very easy to achieve. You need to go to the /usr/ports/multimedia/ffmpeg dir type make config and select [x] LAME at the ncurses dialog. Your chosen options will be saved as plain /var/db/ports/multimedia_ffmpeg/options file. If you remove that file (or type make rmconfig) then these custom options will reset to defaults. Then you type make build deinstall install clean and your port with new options is ready and installed as package. Nothing more is needed. You can even lock that package from the pkg(8) upgrades with pkg lock -y ffmpeg command so it will not be modified later but its better to rebuild such packages everytime you do a pkg upgrade procedure because of libraries versions bump and changes. While its very easy and fast to create a script with these commands to make it more automated you can also use other parts of the FreeBSD Ports infrastructure – enter Poudriere (or Synth) – more on that in the next part.

You also do not have to configure each port that way (which could be PITA for large amount of ports) but you may specify your needed (OPTIONS_SET) or unwanted (OPTIONS_UNSET) parameters only once globally using the /etc/make.conf file. You can also specify which default versions of software you want to use, for example Apache 2.2 instead of 2.4 and PHP 7.0 instead of 7.2. You can find all default versions in the /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.default-versions.mk file. Once you setup these options you can build/rebuild or update your packages from FreeBSD Ports by portmaster(8) tool. Like on Gentoo Linux with USE flags. But this is the original. Gentoo took all/most of its ideas from FreeBSD system and its Ports infrastructure.

The Poudriere is a build framework that uses FreeBSD Ports and FreeBSD Jails to build requested packages in clean reproducible way. You can create whole new binary package repository for pkg(8) command to use with it. I mentioned Synth because while Poudriere is often used to produce whole package repository the Synth is usually used just to rebuild several packages that does not fit your needs.

There is one important things about FreeBSD Ports that is often misunderstood by newcomers. What is the difference between the Ports and packages that are fetched and installed by pkg(8) tool? Its quite simple. A package is just a build and installed port. Nothing more or less. When you use the binary packages using pkg(8) command you are using packages that someone (the FreeBSD project in that case) built for you from the FreeBSD Ports in some point in time. While FreeBSD strives to maintain as up-to-date built packages as possible its the nature of FreeBSD Ports that they are always more up-to-date then the built packages. That is why you may build and install a new version of needed packages by yourself using FreeBSD Ports. One may think of such usage when it comes to security holes. When some locally executed commands (like file(1) for example) has a security hole then its not critical for you to update it as fast as possible because that security hole can be harmless for you, but when new version of Firefox fixes very important security hole then its better to update from FreeBSD Ports version faster because waiting 2 days for the package to be built (along with other packages) can be too long.

More on the FreeBSD Ports topic:

• https://freebsd.org/handbook/ports-using.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/ports-poudriere.html
• https://man.freebsd.org/ports
• https://man.freebsd.org/build
• https://freshports.org/
• https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest

Updating/Building from Source

While the FreeBSD Ports infrastructure is for third party software the FreeBSD Base System (or its parts) also can be easily and convenient build from source. The FreeBSD kernel config is also very small and simple. While Linux kernel config contains thousands of options – 4432 for example in the default CentOS 8.2 install the FreeBSD GENERIC config has about 20 times options less – only 260 options. But that does not saturate the topic. You can start with MINIMAL FreeBSD kernel config which has only 75 options specified.

Linux # grep -c '^CONFIG' /boot/config-$( uname -r )
4432

FreeBSD # grep -c -E '^(device|options)' /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
260

FreeBSD # grep -c -E '^(device|options)' /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf/MINIMAL
75

… and its not only about smaller amount of options. Can you tell my how many steps (and which ones are required) to rebuild CentOS or Ubuntu for example without Bluetooth support?

On the contrary its very simple (and fast) on the FreeBSD side. While /etc/make.conf file is used to enable/disable Ports options the /etc/src.conf file is used to enable/disable FreeBSD Base System options while building it from source. To build FreeBSD without Bluetooth support just add WITHOUT_BLUETOOTH=yes to the /etc/src.conf file and type these to build it:

FreeBSD # beadm create safe
FreeBSD # cd /usr/src
FreeBSD # make buildworld kernel
FreeBSD # reboot
FreeBSD # cd /usr/src
FreeBSD # etcupdate -p      # // IN THE PAST: mergemaster -p
FreeBSD # make installworld
FreeBSD # etcupdate -B      # // IN THE PAST: mergemaster -iU
FreeBSD # reboot

Voila! You now have FreeBSD without Bluetooth support … and if any of the steps failed or because of your lack of experience/expertise your FreeBSD system does not boot or is broken you can use tools from /rescue to try to fix it (or at least figure out what is broken) and when you do not want to cope with this jest select safe ZFS Boot Environment at the FreeBSD loader(8) to boot to the system before you started building modified version of FreeBSD. Yes, You are bulletproof here. While having 294 WITHOUT_X options and 125 WITH_X options you can really tune FreeBSD Base System to your needs.

FreeBSD # zgrep -c WITHOUT_ /usr/share/man/man5/src.conf.5.gz
294

FreeBSD # zgrep -c WITH_ /usr/share/man/man5/src.conf.5.gz
125

The big downside of updating FreeBSD by source is that you can not use the freebsd-update tools to do it … but nothing stops you from creating your own FreeBSD Update Server so you will be able to use freebsd-update by adding updates using a CURRENT or STABLE system instead of RELEASE. That process is described in the Build Your Own FreeBSD Update Server article of official FreeBSD documentation.

More on the FreeBSD Source Updates/Builds topic:

• https://freebsd.org//handbook/kernelconfig.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/makeworld.html
• https://freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/freebsd-update-server/
• https://man.freebsd.org/build
• https://man.freebsd.org/src.conf

Storage

Storage is one of the parts where FreeBSD really shines. Lots of people adore FreeBSD for well integrated ZFS filesystem and its really true. ZFS in FreeBSD has always been first class citizen. Lately OpenZFS 2.0 has been also integrated from the upstream joint FreeBSD and Linux repository. More and more FreeBSD features and solutions are using ZFS features.

Most of these people that like integrated ZFS in FreeBSD do not know about the FreeBSD GEOM modular disk transformation framework which provides various storage related features and utilities like software RAID0/RAID1/RAID10/RAID3/RAID5 configurations or transparent encryption of underlying devices with GELI/GDBE (like LUKS on Linux). It also allows transparent filesystem journaling for ANY filesystem with GJOURNAL (yes also for FAT32 or exFAT) or allows one to export block devices over network with GEOM GATE devices (like NFS for block devices).

FreeBSD also has its own FUSE implementation which allows all these FUSE based filesystems to work natively on FreeBSD. While lots of Linux folks know DRBD probably very few of them knew that FreeBSD comes with its own DRBD like solution called HAST – which does exactly the same thing. While ZFS has a lot features and possibilities FreeBSD still maintains and develops fast and small memory footprint UFS filesystem which today is used either with Soft Updates (SU) or Journaled Soft Updates (SUJ) depending on the use case. For example 10 TB data on UFS filesystem with Journaled Soft Updates (SUJ) takes about 1 minute under fsck(8). These storage solutions are available from FreeBSD Base System alone. The FreeBSD Ports offers much more with distributed filesystems solutions such as CEPH, LeoFS, LizardFS or Minio for Amazon S3 compatible storage.

More on the Storage topic:

• https://is.gd/bsdstg
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/disks.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/geom.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/zfs.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/filesystems.html
• https://man.freebsd.org/geom
• https://man.freebsd.org/geli
• https://man.freebsd.org/fusefs
• https://man.freebsd.org/newfs
• https://man.freebsd.org/hast.conf

Init System

FreeBSD offers really simple yet very powerful init system. It has system wide config under /etc/rc.conf file when you can enable/disable needed services with service_enable=YES and service_enable=NO stanzas. You do not even need to launch vi(1) to add them – just type sysrc service_enable=YES and they are added to the /etc/rc.conf file. There are also default values and services that are enabled and you will find them – along with many comments – in the /etc/defaults/rc.conf file. Each FreeBSD service file has PROVIDE/REQUIRE stanzas which are then used to automatically order the services to start. Services that can be run in parallel are started in parallel to save time. For example its pointless to start sshd(8) daemon without network. To start or stop the service you need to type service sshd start or service sshd stop command. But when a service is not enabled in the /etc/rc.conf file then you need to used add onestart and onestop instead. The Base System separation remains here as FreeBSD Base System services are located at /etc/rc.d directory and third party applications from ports/packages are kept under /usr/local prefix which means /usr/local/etc/rc.d dir.

When using systemd(1) you never know how the services gonna start because it will be different each time. Zero determinism. On FreeBSD you know exactly which services will start when because they are always ordered in the same state according to the PROVIDE/REQUIRE stanzas. FreeBSD also offers tools that will tell you the exact order – rcorder(8) – which can be used for all services, Base System services or third party services separately. There is also service -r command that will show you what was the order at the boot time.

FreeBSD # rcorder /etc/rc.d/* | head
/etc/rc.d/growfs
/etc/rc.d/sysctl
/etc/rc.d/hostid
/etc/rc.d/zvol
/etc/rc.d/dumpon
/etc/rc.d/ddb
/etc/rc.d/geli
/etc/rc.d/gbde
/etc/rc.d/ccd
/etc/rc.d/swap

FreeBSD # rcorder /usr/local/etc/rc.d/* | tail
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/git_daemon
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/fscd
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/cupsd
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/cups_browsed
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/clamav-clamd
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/clamav-milter
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/clamav-freshclam
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/avahi-dnsconfd
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/aria2

FreeBSD # rcorder /etc/rc.d/* /usr/local/etc/rc.d/* 2> | grep -C 3 sshd
/etc/rc.d/ubthidhci
/etc/rc.d/syscons
/etc/rc.d/swaplate
/etc/rc.d/sshd
/etc/rc.d/cron
/etc/rc.d/jail
/etc/rc.d/localpkg

Adding new service to FreeBSD is also very easy as template for new service is very small and simple.

#!/bin/sh

. /etc/rc.subr

name=dummy
rcvar=dummy_enable

start_cmd="${name}_start"
stop_cmd=":"

load_rc_config $name
: ${dummy_enable:=no}
: ${dummy_msg="Nothing started."}

dummy_start()
{
	echo "$dummy_msg"
}

run_rc_command "$1"

If its not simple enough for you there is dedicated FreeBSD article about writing them – Practical rc.d Scripting in BSD – available here.

More on the Init System topic:

• https://freebsd.org/handbook/configtuning-rcd.html
• https://freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/rc-scripting/
• https://man.freebsd.org/rc
• https://man.freebsd.org/rc.conf
• https://man.freebsd.org/rc.local

Linux Binary Compatibility

While Linux can not be FreeBSD – the FreeBSD can be Linux – and its not some slow emulation – its implementation of Linux system calls. There was time when enterprises used to work with Linux only applications (not available on FreeBSD by then) using the Linux Binary Compatibility on FreeBSD because it was faster then running them natively on Linux – FreeBSD Used to Generate Spectacular Special Effects – an official FreeBSD Press Release about FreeBSD being used to generate spacial effects to the one of the best movies of all time – The Matrix (1999).

Today the LINUX_COMPAT is also natively fast and allows one to run Linux applications – even Linux games in X11 with hardware acceleration for graphics. Think of it as WINE but for Linux applications. It lives under /compat/linux directory. It even implements Linux /proc virtual filesystem which can be mounted at the /compat/linux/proc dir but its not mandatory. For any software that does not come with source code and works on Linux the Linux Binary Compatibility saves the day. For example the f.lux project. Before I got to know Redshift I used f.lux Linux binary using LINUX_COMPAT to suppress blue spectrum light from my FreeBSD screen. The Linux Binary Compatibility subsystem can also be used to run Linux bases FreeBSD Jails – with Devuan for example.

More on the Linux Binary Compatibility topic:

• https://freebsd.org/handbook/linuxemu.html
• https://freebsd.org/handbook/linuxemu-lbc-install.html
• https://freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/linux-emulation/

Simplicity

FreeBSD is simple but not coarse/ornery. For example as Linux the FreeBSD system also supports the /proc virtual filesystem but on FreeBSD its optional and not used by default while Linux could not live without it. But while Linux has mandatory /proc it also has another virtual filesystem residing under /sys … but why Linux people need two different virtual filesystems with similar purposes? Why they could not create everything under /proc as it already existed. That is big enigma for my sanity.

But /sys is not the end of that madness. Its just a beginning.

What about these?

• securityfs
• devpts
• cgroup
• pstore
• bpf
• configfs
• selinuxfs
• systemd-1
• mqueue
• debugfs
• hugetlbfs

Take a look at the FreeBSD mount(8) output after the default install on ZFS.

FreeBSD # mount
zroot/ROOT/12.1 on / (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, multilabel)
zroot/tmp on /tmp (zfs, local, noatime, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/mail on /var/mail (zfs, local, nfsv4acls)
zroot/usr/home on /usr/home (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/crash on /var/crash (zfs, local, noatime, noexec, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/log on /var/log (zfs, local, noatime, noexec, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/audit on /var/audit (zfs, local, noatime, noexec, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/tmp on /var/tmp (zfs, local, noatime, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/usr/src on /usr/src (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
zroot/usr/ports on /usr/ports (zfs, local, noatime, nosuid, nfsv4acls)

Several ZFS datasets and one virtual devfs filesystem for /dev directory. With install on UFS it would be similar with several UFS partitions mounted instead of ZFS datasets.

Take a look at the CentOS 8.2 installation with just one physical root (/) XFS filesystem.

[root@centos8 ~]# mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,seclabel,size=919388k,nr_inodes=229847,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,seclabel)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,seclabel,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,seclabel,mode=755)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,seclabel,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,xattr,release_agent=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel)
bpf on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,hugetlb)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,net_cls,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,perf_event)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/rdma type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,rdma)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/pids type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,pids)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel,devices)
configfs on /sys/kernel/config type configfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on / type xfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,attr2,inode64,noquota)
selinuxfs on /sys/fs/selinux type selinuxfs (rw,relatime)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=34,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=17309)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime,seclabel)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime,seclabel)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,pagesize=2M)
tmpfs on /run/user/0 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,seclabel,size=187088k,mode=700)

Fuck me. Its even really hard to just find any REAL filesystem there … fortunately we can ask for only XFS filesystems to display.

[root@centos7 ~]# mount -t xfs
/dev/sda1 on / type xfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,attr2,inode64,noquota)

Lets get on the networking now. Lets assume that you want to make standard enterprise networking setup on a physical server with two interfaces aggregated together into highly available interface bond0 (lagg0 on FreeBSD) and then you want to put VLAN tag and IP address on that VLAN. The CentOS 7.x/8.x installer (Anaconda) will welcome you with this mess.

[root@centos7 ~]# ls -1 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
ifcfg-Bond_connection_1
ifcfg-eno49
ifcfg-eno49-1
ifcfg-eno50
ifcfg-eno50-1
ifcfg-VLAN_connection_1

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-Bond_connection_1
DEVICE=bond0
BONDING_OPTS="miimon=1 updelay=0 downdelay=0 mode=active-backup"
TYPE=Bond
BONDING_MASTER=yes
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_PRIVACY=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME="Bond connection 1"
UUID=ca85417f-8852-43bf-96ee-5bd3f0f83648
ONBOOT=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno49
TYPE=Ethernet
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=eno49
UUID=2f60f50b-38ad-492a-b90a-ba736acf6792
DEVICE=eno49
ONBOOT=no

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno49-1
HWADDR=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=eno49
UUID=342b8494-126d-4f3a-b749-694c8c922aa1
DEVICE=eno49
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno50
TYPE=Ethernet
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=eno50
UUID=4fd36e24-1c6d-4a65-a316-7a14e9a92965
DEVICE=eno50
ONBOOT=no

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno50-1
HWADDR=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=eno50
UUID=a429b697-73c2-404d-9379-472cb3c35e06
DEVICE=eno50
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# cat/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-VLAN_connection_1
VLAN=yes
TYPE=Vlan
PHYSDEV=ca85417f-8852-43bf-96ee-5bd3f0f83648
VLAN_ID=601
REORDER_HDR=yes
GVRP=no
MVRP=no
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=10.20.30.40
PREFIX=24
GATEWAY=10.20.30.1
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_PRIVACY=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME="VLAN connection 1"
UUID=90f7a9bb-1443-4adf-a3eb-86a03b23ecfb
ONBOOT=yes

For the record – I have chosen ‘STATIC’ IPv4 address but installer made these interfaces to use DHCP and that STATIC address. That could be a bug but lets get to the point.

After manual fixing with vi(1) (and hour later) this is how it supposed to look.

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network
GATEWAY=10.20.30.1
NOZEROCONF=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# ls -1 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
ifcfg-bond0
ifcfg-bond0.601
ifcfg-eno49
ifcfg-eno50

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0
DEVICE=bond0
BONDING_OPTS="miimon=1 updelay=0 downdelay=0 mode=active-backup"
TYPE=Bond
BONDING_MASTER=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0.601
VLAN=yes
TYPE=Vlan
VLAN_ID=601
DEVICE=bond0.601
REORDER_HDR=yes
GVRP=no
MVRP=no
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=10.20.30.40
PREFIX=24
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno49
BOOTPROTO=none
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=no
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=eno49
DEVICE=eno49
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

[root@centos7 ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno50
BOOTPROTO=none
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=no
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=eno50
DEVICE=eno50
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

Better … but still takes A LOT OF SPACE and several files to cover that quite simple setup. Not to mention its level of complication and making that very error prone way. The same configuration on FreeBSD would take just 7 lines within single /etc/rc.conf file as shown below.

FreeBSD # cat /etc/rc.conf
ifconfig_fxp0="up"
ifconfig_fxp1="up"
cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport fxp0 laggport fxp1"
vlans_lagg0="601"
ifconfig_lagg0_601="inet 10.20.30.40/24"
defaultrouter="10.20.30.1"

But that are not all the complications. In the past you could restart the network configuration on RHEL/CentOS/Rocky/… with simple service network restart command … not anymore. Now it will not work and you need to type two commands. They are nmcli networking off followed by nmcli networking on command … and to make sure that the second one will be executed and you will not loose the networking connection before executing it You need to type them one after another inside screen(1) or tmux(1) terminal multiplexer. Convenient as fuck 🙂

What about the boot process? FreeBSD boots from root on ZFS partition with just small 512 KB not mountable partition. No separate /boot device is needed. On the other side Linux always needs that separate /boot partition filled with GRUB modules. No matter if its ZFS or LVM. That is why implementation of ZFS Boot Environments is quite complicated on Linux because even if you have root on ZFS on a Linux system there is still unprotected /boot filesystem that can not be snapshoted with ZFS and has to be protected in old classic way which kill the idea of ZFS Boot Environments or Linux.

FreeBSD is really simple and well thought operating system. But also a very underestimated one.

Evolution Instead Rewriting

How many Linux tools or subsystems are abandoned or superseded by new ones? Why the ifconfig(8) command was not updated with new options and instead a new ip(8) command was introduced? Same with netstat(8) being replaced by ss(8). Same with arp(8)/iwconfig/route(8) and many more. What about whole init system? The Linux world has been taken over by systemd(1) whenever you like it or not. Even distributions that have grown their mature init systems like Ubuntu with its Upstart has moved to systemd(1) altogether. The distributions that do not use it are very few and considered a niche today.

In the FreeBSD land on the contrary such things happen only if there is no other way to implement new things. Its the last thing wanted in the FreeBSD. FreeBSD evolves and is developed with stability and backward compatibility in mind. Userland tools are grown and updated with new options instead of rewriting them over and over again. Not to mention how many new bugs are introduced by changing one tool to another.

More on the Evolution Instead Rewriting topic:

• https://duck.com/?q=deprecated+linux+commands
• https://duck.com/?q=deprecated+linux+subsystems+-windows

Documentation

Having system that can do almost anything but not knowing how to do that makes that system pretty useless (or at least pretty PITA to use). FreeBSD offers second to none documentation that is actively maintained and updated. Along with its legendary FreeBSD Handbook and FreeBSD FAQ the FreeBSD project also offers official FreeBSD Articles about various FreeBSD topics. The Man Pages are also very detailed and contain many examples. There is also FreeBSD Wiki page for work in progress documentation and ideas related to FreeBSD development and if you have any problems or questions related to FreeBSD there are official FreeBSD Forums and oldschool Mailing Lists available.

These were only the official project knowledge sources but there are also lots of FreeBSD books. You may also check my dedicated FreeBSD Books article for more in depth look about available FreeBSD books. Here are the best and up-to-date ones.

• Absolute FreeBSD – Complete Guide to FreeBSD – 3nd Edition (2019)
• Beginning Modern Unix (2018)
• Book of PF – 3rd Edition (2015)
• Design and Implementation of FreeBSD 11 Operating System – 2nd Edition (2015)
• FreeBSD Device Drivers (2012)
• FreeBSD Mastery – ZFS (2015)
• FreeBSD Mastery – Advanced ZFS (2016)
• FreeBSD Mastery – Storage Essentials (2014)
• FreeBSD Mastery – Specialty Filesystems (2015)
• FreeBSD Mastery – Jails (2019)

There are also two magazines that are dedicated to BSD and FreeBSD systems. Both are free and cover lots of interesting topics regarding FreeBSD.

• BSD Magazine
• FreeBSD Journal

With all this knowledge and support its really hard not to achieve what you need/want with FreeBSD system.

Community

Last but not least and I would say its even more important then good documentation (which FreeBSD has awesome). People that use FreeBSD do that consciously and are often experienced not only in FreeBSD land but also in topics related to other UNIX systems. Often they took long road of first using the Linux systems before finally setting on the FreeBSD land or they still do Linux administration for a living while resting using far more reasonable and sensible FreeBSD solution. I always find FreeBSD Community helpful and friendly. Always willingly helpful – especially towards newcomers. Even when you try to ‘force’ FreeBSD people to ‘fight’ in unjust/doubtful discussion they will reply with dignity and technical arguments instead of yelling at you.

The FreeBSD project even made several articles and Handbook chapters especially for Linux newcomers – or sometimes called systemd(1) refugees.

• For People New to Both FreeBSD and UNIX®
• FreeBSD Quickstart Guide for Linux® Users
• Explaining BSD

Closing Thoughts

I tried really hard to not make it a Linux rant but some may feel it that way – if so please remember that this was not my intention. FreeBSD like Linux and like any other operating system has its ups and downs. Hope that I showed you most interesting FreeBSD parts. I may add new sections here without a warning in the future 🙂

External Discussions

Discussions and comments from ‘external’ sources are available here:

• Lobsters
• Hacker News
• Reddit

EOF

IBM TSM (Spectrum Protect) on Veritas Cluster Server

Until today I mostly shared articles about free and open systems. Now its time to share so called enterprise experience 🙂 Not so long ago I made a IBM TSM instance as highly available service on Symantec Veritas Cluster Server.

If you prefer to use open and free backup solution then check Bareos Backup Server on FreeBSD article.

The IBM TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) has been rebranded by IBM into IBM Spectrum Protect and in the similar period of time Symantec moved Veritas Cluster Server info InfoScale Availability while creating separate/dedicated Veritas company for this purpose.

The instructions I want to share today are for sure the same for latest versions of Veritas Cluster Server and its later InfoScale Availability incarnations and latest IBM Spectrum Protect 8.1 family introduction was mostly related to rebranding/cleaning of the whole Spectrum Protect/TSM modules and additions, so they all will have common 8.1 label. As these instructions were made for IBM TSM (Spectrum Protect) 7.1.6 version they should still be very similar for current versions.

This highly available IBM TSM instance is part of the whole Backup Consolidation project which uses two physical servers to server both this IBM TSM service and Dell/EMC Networker backup server. When everything is OK then one of the nodes is dedicated to IBM TSM and the other one is used by Dell/EMC Networker, so all physical resources are well saturated and we do not ‘waste’ whole node to wait for 99% of the time empty for the first node to crash. Of course if first node misbehaves or has a hardware failure, then both IBM TSM and Dell/EMC Networker run nicely on single node. It is also very convenient for various maintenance tasks, to be able to switch all services to other node and and work in peace on the first one, but I do not have to tell you that. The third and last service is shared between these two Oracle RMAN Catalog for the Oracle databases metadata information – also for backup/restore purposes.

I will not write here instructions to install the operating system (we use amd64 RHEL 6.x here) or to setup the Veritas Cluster Server as I installed it earlier and its quite simple to set it up. These instructions focus on creating IBM TSM highly available service along using/allocating the resources from the IBM Storwize V5030 storage array where 400 GB SSD disks are dedicated for IBM TSM DB2 database instance and 1.8 TB 10K SAS disks are dedicated for DRAID groups that will be serving space for IBM TSM storage pools implemented in latest IBM TSM container pools with deduplication and compression enabled. The head of IBM Storwize V5030 storage array is shown below.

Each node is IBM System x3650 M4 server with two dual-port 8Gb FC cards and one dual-port 10GE cards … along with builtin 1GE cards for Veritas Cluster Server heartbeats. Each has 192 GB RAM and dual 6-core CPUs @ 3.5 GHz each which translates to 12 physical cores or 24 HTT threads per node. The three internal SSD drives are used for the system only in RAID1 + SPARE configuration. All clustered resources are from IBM Storwize V5030 FC/SAN storage array. The operating system installed on these nodes is amd64 RHEL 6.x and the Veritas Cluster Server is at 6.2.x version. The IBM System x3650 M4 server is shown below.

All of the setting/tuning/decisions were made based on the IBM TSM documentation and great IBM Spectrum Protect Blueprints resources from the valuable IBM developerWorks wiki.

Storage Array Setup

First we need to create MDISKS. We used DRAID with double parity protection + spare for each MDISK with 17 SAS 1.8 TB 10K disks each. That gives 14 disks for data 2 for parity and 1 spare from which all provide I/O thanks to DRAID setup. We have three such MDISKs with ~21.7 TB each for the total 65.1 TB for IBM TSM containers. Of course all these 3 ‘pool’ MDISKs are in one Storage Group. The LUNs for the IBM TSM DB2 database were 5 SSD 400 GB disks setup in a DRAID disk with 1 parity and 1 spare disk. This gives 3 disks for data 1 for parity and 1 for spare space. This gives about 1.1 TB for the IBM TSM DB2 database.

Here are LUNs created from these MDISKs.

I needed to remove some names of course 🙂

LUNs Initialization

Veritas Service Cluster needs to have storage prepared with disk groups which are similar in concept (but more powerful) then LVM. Below are instructions to first detect and then initialize these LUNs from IBM Storwize V5030 storage array. I marked them in blue for more clarity.

[root@300 ~]# haconf -makerw

[root@300 ~]# vxdisk -o alldgs list
DEVICE                TYPE            DISK         GROUP        STATUS
disk_0                auto:LVM        -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00000a auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_00000b auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00B    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000c auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00C    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000d auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00D    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000e auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00E    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000f auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_00001a auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00001b auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00001c auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00001d auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00001e auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00001f auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000008 auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_000009 auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_000010 auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_000011 auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_000012 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000013 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000014 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000015 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000016 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000017 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000018 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000019 auto:none       -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_000020 auto:none       -            -            online invalid

[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_00001a
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_00001b
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_00001c
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_00001d
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_00001e
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_00001f
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000012
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000013
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000014
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000015
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000016
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000017
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000018
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000019
[root@300 ~]# vxdisksetup -i storwizev70000_000020

[root@300 ~]# vxdisk -o alldgs list
DEVICE                TYPE            DISK         GROUP        STATUS
disk_0                auto:LVM        -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00000a auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_00000b auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00B    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000c auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00C    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000d auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00D    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000e auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00E    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000f auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_00001a auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_00001b auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_00001c auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_00001d auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_00001e auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_00001f auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000008 auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_000009 auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_000010 auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_000011 auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_000012 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000013 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000014 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000015 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000016 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000017 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000018 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000019 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000019 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online
storwizev70000_000020 auto:cdsdisk    -            -            online

[root@300 ~]# vxdg init TSM0_dg \
                stgFC_020=storwizev70000_000020 \
                stgFC_012=storwizev70000_000012 \
                stgFC_016=storwizev70000_000016 \
                stgFC_013=storwizev70000_000013 \
                stgFC_014=storwizev70000_000014 \
                stgFC_015=storwizev70000_000015 \
                stgFC_017=storwizev70000_000017 \
                stgFC_018=storwizev70000_000018 \
                stgFC_019=storwizev70000_000019 \
                stgFC_01A=storwizev70000_00001a \
                stgFC_01B=storwizev70000_00001b \
                stgFC_01C=storwizev70000_00001c \
                stgFC_01D=storwizev70000_00001d \
                stgFC_01E=storwizev70000_00001e \
                stgFC_01F=storwizev70000_00001f

[root@300 ~]# vxdisk -o alldgs list
DEVICE                TYPE            DISK         GROUP        STATUS
disk_0                auto:LVM        -            -            online invalid
storwizev70000_00000a auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_00000b auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00B    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000c auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00C    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000d auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00D    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000e auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_00E    NSR_dg_nsr   online
storwizev70000_00000f auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_00001a auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_01A    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_00001b auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_01B    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_00001c auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_01C    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_00001d auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_01D    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_00001e auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_01E    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_00001f auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_01F    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000008 auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_000009 auto:cdsdisk    -            (dg_fencing) online
storwizev70000_000010 auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_000011 auto:cdsdisk    -            (RMAN_dg)    online
storwizev70000_000012 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_012    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000013 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_013    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000014 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_014    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000015 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_015    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000016 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_016    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000017 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_017    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000018 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_018    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000019 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_019    TSM0_dg      online
storwizev70000_000020 auto:cdsdisk    stgFC_020    TSM0_dg      online

[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_instance     maxsize=32G   stgFC_020
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_active_log   maxsize=128G  stgFC_012
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_archive_log  maxsize=384G  stgFC_016
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_db_01        maxsize=300G  stgFC_013
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_db_02        maxsize=300G  stgFC_014
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_db_03        maxsize=300G  stgFC_015
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_db_backup_01 maxsize=900G  stgFC_017
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_db_backup_02 maxsize=900G  stgFC_018
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_db_backup_03 maxsize=900G  stgFC_019
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_pool0_01     maxsize=6700G stgFC_01A
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_pool0_02     maxsize=6700G stgFC_01B
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_pool0_03     maxsize=6700G stgFC_01C
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_pool0_04     maxsize=6700G stgFC_01D
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_pool0_05     maxsize=6700G stgFC_01E
[root@300 ~]# vxassist -g TSM0_dg make TSM0_vol_pool0_06     maxsize=6700G stgFC_01F

[root@300 ~]# vxprint -u h | grep ^sd | column -t
sd  stgFC_00B-01  NSR_vol_index-02          ENABLED  399.95g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_00C-01  NSR_vol_media-02          ENABLED  9.96g    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_00D-01  NSR_vol_nsr-02            ENABLED  79.96g   0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_00E-01  NSR_vol_res-02            ENABLED  9.96g    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_012-01  TSM0_vol_active_log-01    ENABLED  127.96g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_016-01  TSM0_vol_archive_log-01   ENABLED  383.95g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_017-01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_01-01  ENABLED  899.93g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_018-01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_02-01  ENABLED  899.93g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_019-01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_03-01  ENABLED  899.93g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_013-01  TSM0_vol_db_01-01         ENABLED  299.95g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_014-01  TSM0_vol_db_02-01         ENABLED  299.95g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_015-01  TSM0_vol_db_03-01         ENABLED  299.95g  0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_020-01  TSM0_vol_instance-01      ENABLED  31.96g   0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_01A-01  TSM0_vol_pool0_01-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_01B-01  TSM0_vol_pool0_02-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_01C-01  TSM0_vol_pool0_03-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_01D-01  TSM0_vol_pool0_04-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_01E-01  TSM0_vol_pool0_05-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00  -  -  -
sd  stgFC_01F-01  TSM0_vol_pool0_06-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00  -  -  -

[root@300 ~]# vxprint -u h -g TSM0_dg | column -t
TY  NAME                      ASSOC                     KSTATE   LENGTH   PLOFFS  STATE   TUTIL0  PUTIL0
dg  TSM0_dg                   TSM0_dg                   -        -        -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_01A                 storwizev70000_00001a     -        6.54t    -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_01B                 storwizev70000_00001b     -        6.54t    -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_01C                 storwizev70000_00001c     -        6.54t    -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_01D                 storwizev70000_00001d     -        6.54t    -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_01E                 storwizev70000_00001e     -        6.54t    -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_01F                 storwizev70000_00001f     -        6.54t    -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_012                 storwizev70000_000012     -        127.96g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_013                 storwizev70000_000013     -        299.95g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_014                 storwizev70000_000014     -        299.95g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_015                 storwizev70000_000015     -        299.95g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_016                 storwizev70000_000016     -        383.95g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_017                 storwizev70000_000017     -        899.93g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_018                 storwizev70000_000018     -        899.93g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_019                 storwizev70000_000019     -        899.93g  -       -       -       -
dm  stgFC_020                 storwizev70000_000020     -        31.96g   -       -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_active_log       fsgen                     ENABLED  127.96g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_active_log-01    TSM0_vol_active_log       ENABLED  127.96g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_012-01              TSM0_vol_active_log-01    ENABLED  127.96g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_archive_log      fsgen                     ENABLED  383.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_archive_log-01   TSM0_vol_archive_log      ENABLED  383.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_016-01              TSM0_vol_archive_log-01   ENABLED  383.95g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_db_backup_01     fsgen                     ENABLED  899.93g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_db_backup_01-01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_01     ENABLED  899.93g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_017-01              TSM0_vol_db_backup_01-01  ENABLED  899.93g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_db_backup_02     fsgen                     ENABLED  899.93g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_db_backup_02-01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_02     ENABLED  899.93g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_018-01              TSM0_vol_db_backup_02-01  ENABLED  899.93g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_db_backup_03     fsgen                     ENABLED  899.93g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_db_backup_03-01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_03     ENABLED  899.93g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_019-01              TSM0_vol_db_backup_03-01  ENABLED  899.93g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_db_01            fsgen                     ENABLED  299.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_db_01-01         TSM0_vol_db_01            ENABLED  299.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_013-01              TSM0_vol_db_01-01         ENABLED  299.95g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_db_02            fsgen                     ENABLED  299.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_db_02-01         TSM0_vol_db_02            ENABLED  299.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_014-01              TSM0_vol_db_02-01         ENABLED  299.95g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_db_03            fsgen                     ENABLED  299.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_db_03-01         TSM0_vol_db_03            ENABLED  299.95g  -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_015-01              TSM0_vol_db_03-01         ENABLED  299.95g  0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_instance         fsgen                     ENABLED  31.96g   -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_instance-01      TSM0_vol_instance         ENABLED  31.96g   -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_020-01              TSM0_vol_instance-01      ENABLED  31.96g   0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_pool0_01         fsgen                     ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_pool0_01-01      TSM0_vol_pool0_01         ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_01A-01              TSM0_vol_pool0_01-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_pool0_02         fsgen                     ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_pool0_02-01      TSM0_vol_pool0_02         ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_01B-01              TSM0_vol_pool0_02-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_pool0_03         fsgen                     ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_pool0_03-01      TSM0_vol_pool0_03         ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_01C-01              TSM0_vol_pool0_03-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_pool0_04         fsgen                     ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_pool0_04-01      TSM0_vol_pool0_04         ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_01D-01              TSM0_vol_pool0_04-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_pool0_05         fsgen                     ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_pool0_05-01      TSM0_vol_pool0_05         ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_01E-01              TSM0_vol_pool0_05-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00    -       -       -

v   TSM0_vol_pool0_06         fsgen                     ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
pl  TSM0_vol_pool0_06-01      TSM0_vol_pool0_06         ENABLED  6.54t    -       ACTIVE  -       -
sd  stgFC_01F-01              TSM0_vol_pool0_06-01      ENABLED  6.54t    0.00    -       -       -

[root@300 ~]# vxinfo -p -g TSM0_dg | column -t
vol   TSM0_vol_instance         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_instance-01      ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_active_log       fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_active_log-01    ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_archive_log      fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_archive_log-01   ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_db_01            fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_db_01-01         ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_db_02            fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_db_02-01         ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_db_03            fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_db_03-01         ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_db_backup_01     fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_db_backup_01-01  ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_db_backup_02     fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_db_backup_02-01  ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_db_backup_03     fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_db_backup_03-01  ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_pool0_01         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_pool0_01-01      ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_pool0_02         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_pool0_02-01      ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_pool0_03         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_pool0_03-01      ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_pool0_04         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_pool0_04-01      ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_pool0_05         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_pool0_05-01      ACTIVE
vol   TSM0_vol_pool0_06         fsgen   Started
plex  TSM0_vol_pool0_06-01      ACTIVE

[root@300 ~]# find /dev/vx/dsk -name TSM0_\*
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_06
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_05
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_04
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_03
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_02
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_01
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_03
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_02
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_01
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_03
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_02
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_01
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_archive_log
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_active_log
/dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_instance

[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_06     &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_05     &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_04     &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_03     &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_02     &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_01     &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_03 &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_02 &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_01 &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_03        &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_02        &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_01        &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_archive_log  &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_active_log   &
[root@300 ~]# mkfs -t vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/vx/rdsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_instance     &

[root@300 ~]# haconf -dump -makero

Veritas Cluster Server Group

Now as we have LUNs initialized into Disk Group we may now create the cluster service.

[root@300 ~]# haconf -makerw

[root@300 ~]# hagrp -add TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10136 Group added; populating SystemList and setting the Parallel attribute recommended before adding resources
[root@300 ~]# hagrp -modify TSM0_site SystemList 300 0 301 1
[root@300 ~]# hagrp -modify TSM0_site AutoStartList 300 301
[root@300 ~]# hagrp -modify TSM0_site Parallel 0

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_nic_bond0 NIC TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_nic_bond0 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_nic_bond0 PingOptimize 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_nic_bond0 Device bond0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_nic_bond0 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_nic_bond0 -sys 301

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_ip_bond0 IP TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_ip_bond0 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_ip_bond0 Device bond0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_ip_bond0 Address 10.20.30.44
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_ip_bond0 NetMask 255.255.255.0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_ip_bond0 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_ip_bond0 TSM0_nic_bond0

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_dg DiskGroup TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_dg Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_dg DiskGroup TSM0_dg
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_dg Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_dg -sys 301

[root@300 ~]# mkdir /tsm0
[root@301 ~]# mkdir /tsm0

I did not wanted to type all these over and over again so I generated these commands as shown below.

[LOCAL] % cat > LIST << __EOF
stgFC_020    32  /tsm0                         TSM0_vol_instance      TSM0_mnt_instance
stgFC_012   128  /tsm0/active_log              TSM0_vol_active_log    TSM0_mnt_active_log
stgFC_016   384  /tsm0/archive_log             TSM0_vol_archive_log   TSM0_mnt_archive_log
stgFC_013   300  /tsm0/db/db_01                TSM0_vol_db_01         TSM0_mnt_db_01
stgFC_014   300  /tsm0/db/db_02                TSM0_vol_db_02         TSM0_mnt_db_02
stgFC_015   300  /tsm0/db/db_03                TSM0_vol_db_03         TSM0_mnt_db_03
stgFC_017   900  /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_01  TSM0_vol_db_backup_01  TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01
stgFC_018   900  /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_02  TSM0_vol_db_backup_02  TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02
stgFC_019   900  /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_03  TSM0_vol_db_backup_03  TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03
stgFC_01A  6700  /tsm0/pool0/pool0_01          TSM0_vol_pool0_01      TSM0_mnt_pool0_01
stgFC_01B  6700  /tsm0/pool0/pool0_02          TSM0_vol_pool0_02      TSM0_mnt_pool0_02
stgFC_01C  6700  /tsm0/pool0/pool0_03          TSM0_vol_pool0_03      TSM0_mnt_pool0_03
stgFC_01D  6700  /tsm0/pool0/pool0_04          TSM0_vol_pool0_04      TSM0_mnt_pool0_04
stgFC_01E  6700  /tsm0/pool0/pool0_05          TSM0_vol_pool0_05      TSM0_mnt_pool0_05
stgFC_01F  6700  /tsm0/pool0/pool0_06          TSM0_vol_pool0_06      TSM0_mnt_pool0_06
__EOF

[LOCAL]# cat LIST \
  | while read STG SIZE MNTPOINT VOL MNTNAME
    do
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -add    ${MNTNAME} Mount TSM0_site
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} Critical 1
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} SnapUmount 0
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} MountPoint ${MNTPOINT}
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/${VOL}
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} FSType vxfs
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} MountOpt largefiles
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} FsckOpt %-y
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -modify ${MNTNAME} Enabled 1
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -probe  ${MNTNAME} -sys 301
      echo sleep 0.2; echo hares -link   ${MNTNAME} TSM0_dg
      echo
    done

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_instance Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance MountPoint /tsm0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_instance Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_instance -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_instance TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_active_log Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log MountPoint /tsm0/active_log
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_active_log
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_active_log Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_active_log -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_active_log TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_archive_log Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log MountPoint /tsm0/archive_log
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_archive_log
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_archive_log Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_archive_log -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_archive_log TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_db_01 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 MountPoint /tsm0/db/db_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_01 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_db_01 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_01 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_db_02 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 MountPoint /tsm0/db/db_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_02 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_db_02 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_02 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_db_03 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 MountPoint /tsm0/db/db_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_03 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_db_03 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_03 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 MountPoint /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 MountPoint /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 MountPoint /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_db_backup_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 MountPoint /tsm0/pool0/pool0_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_01 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 MountPoint /tsm0/pool0/pool0_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_02 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 MountPoint /tsm0/pool0/pool0_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_03 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 MountPoint /tsm0/pool0/pool0_04
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_04
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_04 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 MountPoint /tsm0/pool0/pool0_05
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_05
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_05 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 Mount TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 Critical 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 SnapUmount 0
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 MountPoint /tsm0/pool0/pool0_06
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 BlockDevice /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_pool0_06
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 FSType vxfs
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 MountOpt largefiles
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 FsckOpt %-y
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_06 TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# hares -state | grep TSM0 | grep _mnt_ | \
                while read I; do hares -display $I 2>&1 | grep -v ArgListValues | grep 'largefiles'; done | column -t
TSM0_mnt_active_log    MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_active_log    MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_archive_log   MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_archive_log   MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_01         MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_01         MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_02         MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_02         MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_03         MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_03         MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01  MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01  MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02  MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02  MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03  MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03  MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_instance      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_instance      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06      MountOpt  localclus  largefiles

[root@300 ~]# hares -add    TSM0_server Application TSM0_site
VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10242 Resource added. Enabled attribute must be set before agent monitors
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_server StartProgram   "/etc/init.d/tsm0 start"
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_server StopProgram    "/etc/init.d/tsm0 stop"
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_server MonitorProgram "/etc/init.d/tsm0 status"
[root@300 ~]# hares -modify TSM0_server Enabled 1
[root@300 ~]# hares -probe  TSM0_server -sys 301
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_active_log
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_archive_log
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_db_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_db_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_db_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_pool0_01
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_pool0_02
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_pool0_03
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_pool0_04
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_pool0_05
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_mnt_pool0_06
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_server           TSM0_ip_bond0
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_active_log   TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_archive_log  TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_01        TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_02        TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_03        TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     TSM0_mnt_instance
[root@300 ~]# hares -link   TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     TSM0_mnt_instance

[root@300 ~]# vxdg import TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# mount -t vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/TSM0_dg/TSM0_vol_instance /tsm0

[root@301 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/active_log
[root@301 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/archive_log
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/db/db_01
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/db/db_02
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/db/db_03
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_01
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_02
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_03
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/pool0/pool0_01
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/pool0/pool0_02
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/pool0/pool0_03
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/pool0/pool0_04
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/pool0/pool0_05
[root@300 ~]# mkdir -p /tsm0/pool0/pool0_06

[root@300 ~]# find /tsm0
/tsm0
/tsm0/lost+found
/tsm0/active_log
/tsm0/archive_log
/tsm0/db
/tsm0/db/db_01
/tsm0/db/db_02
/tsm0/db/db_03
/tsm0/db_backup
/tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_01
/tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_02
/tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_03
/tsm0/pool0
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_01
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_02
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_03
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_04
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_05
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_06

[root@300 ~]# umount /tsm0

[root@300 ~]# vxdg deport TSM0_dg

[root@300 ~]# haconf -dump -makero

[root@300 ~]# grep TSM0_server /etc/VRTSvcs/conf/config/main.cf
        Application TSM0_server (
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_ip_bond0
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_active_log
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_archive_log
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_db_01
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_db_02
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_db_03
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_instance
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_pool0_01
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_pool0_02
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_pool0_03
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_pool0_04
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_pool0_05
        TSM0_server requires TSM0_mnt_pool0_06
        //      Application TSM0_server

Local Per Node Resources

[root@300 ~]# lvcreate -n lv_tmp        -L  4G vg_local
[root@300 ~]# lvcreate -n lv_opt_tivoli -L 16G vg_local
[root@300 ~]# lvcreate -n lv_home       -L  4G vg_local

[root@301 ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg_local/lv_tmp
[root@301 ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg_local/lv_opt_tivoli
[root@301 ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg_local/lv_home

[root@300 ~]# lvcreate -n lv_tmp        -L  4G vg_local
[root@300 ~]# lvcreate -n lv_opt_tivoli -L 16G vg_local
[root@300 ~]# lvcreate -n lv_home       -L  4G vg_local

[root@301 ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg_local/lv_tmp
[root@301 ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg_local/lv_opt_tivoli
[root@301 ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/vg_local/lv_home

[root@300 ~]# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/mapper/vg_local-lv_root              /           ext3 rw,noatime,nodiratime      1 1
UUID=28d0988a-e6d7-48d8-b0e5-0f70f8eb681e /boot       ext3 defaults                   1 2
UUID=D401-661A                            /boot/efi   vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 0
/dev/vg_local/lv_swap                     swap        swap defaults                   0 0
/dev/vg_local/lv_tmp                      /tmp        ext3 rw,noatime,nodiratime      2 2
/dev/vg_local/lv_opt_tivoli               /opt/tivoli ext3 rw,noatime,nodiratime      2 2
/dev/vg_local/lv_home                     /home       ext3 rw,noatime,nodiratime      2 2

# VIRT
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

Install IBM TSM Server Dependencies.

[root@ANY ~]# yum install numactl
[root@ANY ~]# yum install /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
[root@ANY ~]# yum install /usr/lib64/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
[root@ANY ~]# yum install xorg-x11-xauth xterm fontconfig libICE \
                          libX11-common libXau libXmu libSM libX11 libXt

System /etc/sysctl.conf parameters for both nodes.

[root@300 ~]# cat /etc/sysctl.conf
# Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

# Controls source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Do not accept source routing
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename.
# Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications.
kernel.core_uses_pid = 1

# Controls the use of TCP syncookies
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1

# Disable netfilter on bridges.
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0

# Controls the default maxmimum size of a mesage queue
kernel.msgmnb = 65536

# Controls the maximum size of a message, in bytes
kernel.msgmax = 65536

# Controls the maximum shared segment size, in bytes
kernel.shmmax = 206158430208

# Controls the maximum number of shared memory segments, in pages
kernel.shmall = 4294967296

# For SF HA
kernel.hung_task_panic=0

# NetWorker
# connection backlog (hash tables) to the maximum value allowed
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 8192
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 8192

# increase the memory size available for TCP buffers
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 8192 524288 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 8192 524288 16777216

# recommended keepalive values
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl = 30
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 20
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 600

# recommended timeout after improper close
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 60
sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries = 64

# for RDBMS 11.2.0.4 rman cat
fs.suid_dumpable = 1
fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576
fs.file-max = 6815744

# support EMC 2016.04.20
net.core.somaxconn = 1024

# 256 * RAM in GB
kernel.shmmni = 65536

# TSM/NSR
kernel.sem = 250 256000 32 65536

# RAM in GB * 1024
kernel.msgmni = 262144

# TSM
kernel.randomize_va_space = 0
vm.swappiness = 0
vm.overcommit_memory = 0

[root@301 ~]# cat /etc/sysctl.conf
# Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

# Controls source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Do not accept source routing
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename.
# Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications.
kernel.core_uses_pid = 1

# Controls the use of TCP syncookies
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1

# Disable netfilter on bridges.
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0

# Controls the default maxmimum size of a mesage queue
kernel.msgmnb = 65536

# Controls the maximum size of a message, in bytes
kernel.msgmax = 65536

# Controls the maximum shared segment size, in bytes
kernel.shmmax = 206158430208

# Controls the maximum number of shared memory segments, in pages
kernel.shmall = 4294967296

# For SF HA
kernel.hung_task_panic=0

# NetWorker
# connection backlog (hash tables) to the maximum value allowed
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 8192
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 8192

# increase the memory size available for TCP buffers
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 8192 524288 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 8192 524288 16777216

# recommended keepalive values
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl = 30
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 20
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 600

# recommended timeout after improper close
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 60
sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries = 64

# for RDBMS 11.2.0.4 rman cat
fs.suid_dumpable = 1
fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576
fs.file-max = 6815744

# support EMC 2016.04.20
net.core.somaxconn = 1024

# 256 * RAM in GB
kernel.shmmni = 65536

# TSM/NSR
kernel.sem = 250 256000 32 65536

# RAM in GB * 1024
kernel.msgmni = 262144

# TSM
kernel.randomize_va_space = 0
vm.swappiness = 0
vm.overcommit_memory = 0

Install IBM TSM Server

Connect to each node with SSH Forwarding enabled and install IBM TSM server.

[root@300 ~]# chmod +x 7.1.6.000-TIV-TSMSRV-Linuxx86_64.bin
[root@300 ~]# ./7.1.6.000-TIV-TSMSRV-Linuxx86_64.bin
[root@300 ~]# ./install.sh

… and the second node.

[root@301 ~]# chmod +x 7.1.6.000-TIV-TSMSRV-Linuxx86_64.bin
[root@301 ~]# ./7.1.6.000-TIV-TSMSRV-Linuxx86_64.bin
[root@301 ~]# ./install.sh

Options choosen during installation.

INSTALL | DESELECT 'Languages' and DESELECT 'Operations Center'
INSTALL | /opt/tivoli/IBM/IBMIMShared
INSTALL | /opt/tivoli/IBM/InstallationManager/eclipse
INSTALL | /opt/tivoli/tsm

Screenshots from the installation process.

Install IBM TSM Client

[root@300 ~]# yum localinstall gskcrypt64-8.0.50.66.linux.x86_64.rpm \
                               gskssl64-8.0.50.66.linux.x86_64.rpm \
                               TIVsm-API64.x86_64.rpm \
                               TIVsm-BA.x86_64.rpm

[root@301 ~]# yum localinstall gskcrypt64-8.0.50.66.linux.x86_64.rpm \
                               gskssl64-8.0.50.66.linux.x86_64.rpm \
                               TIVsm-API64.x86_64.rpm \
                               TIVsm-BA.x86_64.rpm

Nodes Configuration for IBM TSM Server

[root@300 ~]# useradd -u 1500 -m tsm0
[root@301 ~]# useradd -u 1500 -m tsm0

[root@300 ~]# passwd tsm0
Changing password for user tsm0.
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

[root@301 ~]# passwd tsm0
Changing password for user tsm0.
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

[root@300 ~]# tail -1 /etc/passwd
tsm0:x:1500:1500::/home/tsm0:/bin/bash

[root@301 ~]# tail -1 /etc/passwd
tsm0:x:1500:1500::/home/tsm0:/bin/bash

[root@300 ~]# tail -1 /etc/group
tsm0:x:1500:

[root@301 ~]# tail -1 /etc/group
tsm0:x:1500:

[root@300 ~]# cat /etc/security/limits.conf
# ORACLE
oracle              soft    nproc   16384
oracle              hard    nproc   16384
oracle              soft    nofile  4096
oracle              hard    nofile  65536
oracle              soft    stack   10240

# TSM
tsm0                soft    nofile  32768
tsm0                hard    nofile  32768

[root@301 ~]# cat /etc/security/limits.conf
# ORACLE
oracle              soft    nproc   16384
oracle              hard    nproc   16384
oracle              soft    nofile  4096
oracle              hard    nofile  65536
oracle              soft    stack   10240

# TSM
tsm0                soft    nofile  32768
tsm0                hard    nofile  32768

[root@300 ~]# :> /var/run/dsmserv_tsm0.pid
[root@301 ~]# :> /var/run/dsmserv_tsm0.pid

[root@300 ~]# chown tsm0:tsm0 /var/run/dsmserv_tsm0.pid
[root@301 ~]# chown tsm0:tsm0 /var/run/dsmserv_tsm0.pid

[root@300 ~]# hares -state | grep TSM
TSM0_dg               State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_dg               State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_ip_bond0         State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_ip_bond0         State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_active_log   State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_active_log   State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_archive_log  State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_archive_log  State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_01        State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_01        State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_02        State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_02        State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_03        State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_03        State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_instance     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_instance     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     State                 301  OFFLINE
TSM0_nic_bond0        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_nic_bond0        State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_server           State                 300  OFFLINE
TSM0_server           State                 301  OFFLINE

[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_instance -sys $( hostname -s )

[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_ip_bond0     -sys $( hostname -s )

[root@300 ~]# hares -state | grep TSM0 | grep 301 | grep mnt | grep -v instance | awk '{print $1}' \
                | while read I; do hares -online ${I} -sys $( hostname -s ); done

[root@300 ~]# hares -state | grep 301 | grep TSM0
TSM0_dg               State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_ip_bond0         State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_active_log   State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_archive_log  State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_01        State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_02        State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_03        State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_instance     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_nic_bond0        State                 301  ONLINE
TSM0_server           State                 301  OFFLINE

[root@300 ~]# find /tsm0 | grep -v 'lost+found'
/tsm0
/tsm0/active_log
/tsm0/archive_log
/tsm0/db
/tsm0/db/db_01
/tsm0/db/db_02
/tsm0/db/db_03
/tsm0/db_backup
/tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_01
/tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_02
/tsm0/db_backup/db_backup_03
/tsm0/pool0
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_01
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_02
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_03
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_04
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_05
/tsm0/pool0/pool0_06

[root@300 ~]# chown -R tsm0:tsm0 /tsm0

IBM TSM Server Configuration

Connect to one of the nodes with SSH Forwarding enabled.

[root@300 ~]# cd /opt/tivoli/tsm/server/bin
[root@300 /opt/tivoli/tsm/server/bin]# ./dsmicfgx
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

Launching installer...

Options choosen during configuration.

INSTALL | Instance user ID:
INSTALL |    tsm0
INSTALL |
INSTALL | Instance directory:
INSTALL |    /tsm0
INSTALL |
INSTALL | Database directories:
INSTALL |    /tsm0/db/db_01
INSTALL |    /tsm0/db/db_02
INSTALL |    /tsm0/db/db_03
INSTALL |
INSTALL | Active log directory:
INSTALL |    /tsm0/active_log
INSTALL |
INSTALL | Primary archive log directory:
INSTALL |    /tsm0/archive_log
INSTALL |
INSTALL | Instance autostart setting:
INSTALL |    Start automatically using the instance user ID

Screenshots from the configuration process.

Log from the IBM TSM DB2 instance creation.

Creating the database manager instance...
The database manager instance was created successfully.

Formatting the server database...

ANR7800I DSMSERV generated at 16:39:04 on Jun  8 2016.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Linux/x86_64
Version 7, Release 1, Level 6.000

Licensed Materials - Property of IBM

(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1990, 2016.
All rights reserved.
U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure
restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corporation.

ANR7801I Subsystem process ID is 5208.
ANR0900I Processing options file /tsm0/dsmserv.opt.
ANR0010W Unable to open message catalog for language en_US.UTF-8. The default
language message catalog will be used.
ANR7814I Using instance directory /tsm0.
ANR4726I The ICC support module has been loaded.
ANR0152I Database manager successfully started.
ANR2976I Offline DB backup for database TSMDB1 started.
ANR2974I Offline DB backup for database TSMDB1 completed successfully.
ANR0992I Server's database formatting complete.
ANR0369I Stopping the database manager because of a server shutdown.

Format completed with return code 0
Beginning initial configuration...

ANR7800I DSMSERV generated at 16:39:04 on Jun  8 2016.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Linux/x86_64
Version 7, Release 1, Level 6.000

Licensed Materials - Property of IBM

(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1990, 2016.
All rights reserved.
U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure
restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corporation.

ANR7801I Subsystem process ID is 8741.
ANR0900I Processing options file /tsm0/dsmserv.opt.
ANR0010W Unable to open message catalog for language en_US.UTF-8. The default
language message catalog will be used.
ANR7814I Using instance directory /tsm0.
ANR4726I The ICC support module has been loaded.
ANR0990I Server restart-recovery in progress.
ANR0152I Database manager successfully started.
ANR1628I The database manager is using port 51500 for server connections.
ANR1636W The server machine GUID changed: old value (), new value (f0.8a.27.61-
.e5.43.b6.11.92.b5.00.0a.f7.49.31.18).
ANR2100I Activity log process has started.
ANR3733W The master encryption key cannot be generated because the server
password is not set.
ANR3339I Default Label in key data base is TSM Server SelfSigned Key.
ANR4726I The NAS-NDMP support module has been loaded.
ANR1794W TSM SAN discovery is disabled by options.
ANR2200I Storage pool BACKUPPOOL defined (device class DISK).
ANR2200I Storage pool ARCHIVEPOOL defined (device class DISK).
ANR2200I Storage pool SPACEMGPOOL defined (device class DISK).
ANR2560I Schedule manager started.
ANR0993I Server initialization complete.
ANR0916I TIVOLI STORAGE MANAGER distributed by Tivoli is now ready for use.
ANR2094I Server name set to TSM0.
ANR4865W The server name has been changed. Windows clients that use "passworda-
ccess generate" may be unable to authenticate with the server.
ANR2068I Administrator ADMIN registered.
ANR2076I System privilege granted to administrator ADMIN.
ANR1912I Stopping the activity log because of a server shutdown.
ANR0369I Stopping the database manager because of a server shutdown.

Configuration is complete.

Modify IBM TSM Server Startup Script

Modified startup script to properly work with Veritas Cluster Server with modification in blue below.

[root@300 ~]# cat /etc/init.d/tsm0
#!/bin/bash
#
# dsmserv       Start/Stop IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
#
# chkconfig: - 90 10
# description: Starts/Stops an IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Server instance
# processname: dsmserv
# pidfile: /var/run/dsmserv_instancename.pid

#***********************************************************************
# Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM)                                   *
# Server Component                                                     *
#                                                                      *
# IBM Confidential                                                     *
# (IBM Confidential-Restricted when combined with the Aggregated OCO   *
# Source Modules for this Program)                                     *
#                                                                      *
# OCO Source Materials                                                 *
#                                                                      *
# 5765-303 (C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1990, 2009                    *
#***********************************************************************

#
# This init script is designed to start a single Tivoli Storage Manager
# server instance on a system where multiple instances might be running.
# It assumes that the name of the script is also the name of the instance
# to be started (or, if the script name starts with Snn or Knn, where 'n'
# is a digit, that the name of the instance is the script name with the
# three letter prefix removed).
#
# To use the script to start multiple instances, install multiple copies
# of the script in /etc/rc.d/init.d, naming each copy after the instance
# it will start.
#
# The script makes a number of simplifying assumptions about the way
# the instance is set up.
# - The Tivoli Storage Manager Server instance runs as a non-root user whose
#   name is the instance name
# - The server's instance directory (the directory in which it keeps all of
#   its important state information) is in a subdirectory of the home
#   directory called tsminst1.
# If any of these assumptions are not valid, then the script will require
# some modifications to work.  To start with, look at the
# instance, instance_user, and instance_dir variables set below...

# First of all, check for syntax
if [[ $# != 1 ]]
then
  echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart}"
  exit 1
fi

prog="dsmserv"
instance=tsm0
serverBinDir="/opt/tivoli/tsm/server/bin"

if [[ ! -e $serverBinDir/$prog ]]
then
   echo "IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Server not found on this system ($serverBinDir/$prog)"
   exit -1
fi

# see if $0 starts with Snn or Knn, where 'n' is a digit.  If it does, then
# strip off the prefix and use the remainder as the instance name.
if [[ ${instance:0:1} == S ]]
then
  instance=${instance#S[0123456789][0123456789]}
elif [[ ${instance:0:1} == K ]]
then
  instance=${instance#K[0123456789][0123456789]}
fi

instance_home=`${serverBinDir}/dsmfngr $instance 2>/dev/null`
if [[ -z "$instance_home" ]]
then
  instance_home="/home/${instance}"
fi
instance_user=tsm0
instance_dir=/tsm0
pidfile="/var/run/${prog}_${instance}.pid"

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:$serverBinDir

#
# Do some basic error checking before starting the server
#
# Is the server installed?
if [[ ! -e $serverBinDir/$prog ]]
then
   echo "IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Server not found on this system"
   exit 0
fi

# Does the instance directory exist?
if [[ ! -d $instance_dir ]]
then
 echo "Instance directory ${instance_dir} does not exist"
 exit -1
fi
rc=0

SLEEP_INTERVAL=5
MAX_SLEEP_TIME=10

function check_pid_file()
{
    test -f $pidfile
}

function check_process()
{
    ps -p `cat $pidfile` > /dev/null
}

function check_running()
{
    check_pid_file && check_process
}

start() {
        # set the standard value for the user limits
        ulimit -c unlimited
        ulimit -d unlimited
        ulimit -f unlimited
        ulimit -n 65536
        ulimit -t unlimited
        ulimit -u 16384

        echo -n "Starting $prog instance $instance ... "
        #if we're already running, say so
        status 0
        if [[ $g_status == "running" ]]
        then
           echo "$prog instance $instance already running..."
           exit 0
        else
           $serverBinDir/rc.dsmserv -u $instance_user -i $instance_dir -q >/dev/null 2>&1 &
           # give enough time to server to start
           sleep 5
           # if the lock file got created, we did ok
           if [[ -f $instance_dir/dsmserv.v6lock ]]
           then
              gawk --source '{print $4}' $instance_dir/dsmserv.v6lock>$pidfile
              [ $? = 0 ] && echo "Succeeded" || echo "Failed"
              rc=$?
              echo
              [ $rc -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/${instance}
              return $rc
           else
              echo "Failed"
              return 1
           fi
       fi
}

stop() {
        echo  "Stopping $prog instance $instance ..."
        if [[ -e $pidfile ]]
        then
           # make sure someone else didn't kill us already
           progpid=`cat $pidfile`
           running=`ps -ef | grep $prog | grep -w $progpid | grep -v grep`
           if [[ -n $running ]]
           then
              #echo "executing cmd kill `cat $pidfile`"
              kill `cat $pidfile`

              total_slept=0
              while check_running; do \
                  echo  "$prog instance $instance still running, will check after $SLEEP_INTERVAL seconds"
                  sleep $SLEEP_INTERVAL
                  total_slept=`expr $total_slept + 1`

                  if [ "$total_slept" -gt "$MAX_SLEEP_TIME" ]; then \
                      break
                  fi
              done

              if  check_running
              then
                echo "Unable to stop $prog instance $instance"
                exit 1
              else
                echo "$prog instance $instance stopped Successfully"
              fi
           fi
           # remove the pid file so that we don't try to kill same pid again
           rm $pidfile
           if [[ $? != 0 ]]
           then
              echo "Process $prog instance $instance stopped, but unable to remove $pidfile"
              echo "Be sure to remove $pidfile."
              exit 1
           fi
        else
           echo "$prog instance $instance is not running."
        fi
        rc=$?
        echo
        [ $rc -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/${instance}
        return $rc
}

status() {
      # check usage
      if [[ $# != 1 ]]
      then
         echo "$0: Invalid call to status routine. Expected argument: "
         echo "where display_to_screen is 0 or 1 and indicates whether output will be sent to screen."
         exit 100
         # exit 1
      fi
      #see if file $pidfile exists
      # if it does, see if process is running
      # if it doesn't, it's not running - or at least was not started by dsmserv.rc
      if [[ -e $pidfile ]]
      then
         progpid=`cat $pidfile`
         running=`ps -ef | grep $prog | grep -w $progpid | grep -v grep`
         if [[ -n $running ]]
         then
            g_status="running"
         else
            g_status="stopped"
            # remove the pidfile if stopped.
            if [[ -e $pidfile ]]
            then
                rm $pidfile
                if [[ $? != 0 ]]
                then
                    echo "$prog instance $instance stopped, but unable to remove $pidfile"
                    echo "Be sure to remove $pidfile."
                fi
            fi
         fi
      else
        g_status="stopped"
      fi
      if [[ $1 == 1 ]]
      then
            echo "Status of $prog instance $instance: $g_status"
      fi

      if [ "${1}" = "1" ]
      then
        case ${g_status} in
          (stopped) EXIT=100 ;;
          (running) EXIT=110 ;;
        esac
        exit ${EXIT}
      fi
}

restart() {
        stop
        start
}

case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  status)
        status 1
        ;;
  restart|reload)
        restart
        ;;
  *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart}"
        exit 1
esac

exit $?

… and the diff(1) between original and modified one.

[root@300 ~]# diff -u /etc/init.d/tsm0 /root/tsm0
--- /etc/init.d/tsm0    2016-07-13 13:20:43.000000000 +0200
+++ /root/tsm0          2016-07-13 13:27:41.000000000 +0200
@@ -207,7 +207,8 @@
       then
          echo "$0: Invalid call to status routine. Expected argument: "
          echo "where display_to_screen is 0 or 1 and indicates whether output will be sent to screen."
-         exit 1
+         exit 100
+         # exit 1
       fi
       #see if file $pidfile exists
       # if it does, see if process is running
@@ -239,6 +240,15 @@
       then
             echo "Status of $prog instance $instance: $g_status"
       fi
+
+      if [ "${1}" = "1" ]
+      then
+        case ${g_status} in
+          (stopped) EXIT=100 ;;
+          (running) EXIT=110 ;;
+        esac
+        exit ${EXIT}
+      fi
 }

 restart() {

Copy tsm0 Profile to the Other Node

[root@300 ~]# pwd
/home

[root@300 /home]# tar -czf - tsm0 | ssh 301 'tar -C /home -xzf -'

[root@300 ~]# cat /home/tsm0/sqllib/db2nodes.cfg
0 TSM0.domain.com 0

[root@301 ~]# cat /home/tsm0/sqllib/db2nodes.cfg
0 TSM0.domain.com 0

IBM TSM Server Start

[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_ip_bond0         -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_active_log   -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_archive_log  -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_db_01        -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_db_02        -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_db_03        -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_instance     -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     -sys 300
[root@300 ~]# hares -online TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     -sys 300

[root@300 ~]# hares -state | grep TSM0 | grep 300
TSM0_dg               State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_ip_bond0         State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_active_log   State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_archive_log  State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_01        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_02        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_03        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_instance     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_nic_bond0        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_server           State                 300  OFFLINE

[root@300 ~]# cat >> /etc/services << __EOF
DB2_tsm0        60000/tcp
DB2_tsm0_1      60001/tcp
DB2_tsm0_2      60002/tcp
DB2_tsm0_3      60003/tcp
DB2_tsm0_4      60004/tcp
DB2_tsm0_END    60005/tcp
__EOF

[root@300 ~]# hagrp -freeze TSM0_site

[root@300 ~]# hastatus -sum

-- SYSTEM STATE
-- System               State                Frozen

A  300            RUNNING              0
A  301            RUNNING              0

-- GROUP STATE
-- Group           System               Probed     AutoDisabled    State

B  NSR_site        300            Y          N               OFFLINE
B  NSR_site        301            Y          N               ONLINE
B  RMAN_site       300            Y          N               OFFLINE
B  RMAN_site       301            Y          N               ONLINE
B  TSM0_site       300            Y          N               PARTIAL
B  TSM0_site       301            Y          N               OFFLINE
B  VCS_site        300            Y          N               OFFLINE
B  VCS_site        301            Y          N               ONLINE

-- GROUPS FROZEN
-- Group

C  TSM0_site

-- RESOURCES DISABLED
-- Group           Type            Resource

H  TSM0_site      Application     TSM0_server
H  TSM0_site      DiskGroup       TSM0_dg
H  TSM0_site      IP              TSM0_ip_bond0
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_active_log
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_archive_log
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_db_01
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_db_02
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_db_03
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_instance
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_pool0_01
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_pool0_02
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_pool0_03
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_pool0_04
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_pool0_05
H  TSM0_site      Mount           TSM0_mnt_pool0_06
H  TSM0_site      NIC             TSM0_nic_bond0

[root@300 ~]# su - tsm0 -c '/opt/tivoli/tsm/server/bin/dsmserv -i /tsm0'
ANR7800I DSMSERV generated at 16:39:04 on Jun  8 2016.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Linux/x86_64
Version 7, Release 1, Level 6.000

Licensed Materials - Property of IBM

(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1990, 2016.
All rights reserved.
U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure
restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corporation.

ANR7801I Subsystem process ID is 9834.
ANR0900I Processing options file /tsm0/dsmserv.opt.
ANR0010W Unable to open message catalog for language en_US.UTF-8. The default language message
catalog will be used.
ANR7814I Using instance directory /tsm0.
ANR4726I The ICC support module has been loaded.
ANR0990I Server restart-recovery in progress.
ANR0152I Database manager successfully started.
ANR1628I The database manager is using port 51500 for server connections.
ANR1635I The server machine GUID, 54.80.e8.50.e4.48.e6.11.8e.6d.00.0a.f7.49.2b.08, has
initialized.
ANR2100I Activity log process has started.
ANR3733W The master encryption key cannot be generated because the server password is not set.
ANR3339I Default Label in key data base is TSM Server SelfSigned Key.
ANR4726I The NAS-NDMP support module has been loaded.
ANR1794W TSM SAN discovery is disabled by options.
ANR2803I License manager started.
ANR8200I TCP/IP Version 4 driver ready for connection with clients on port 1500.
ANR9639W Unable to load Shared License File dsmreg.sl.
ANR9652I An EVALUATION LICENSE for IBM System Storage Archive Manager will expire on
08/13/2016.
ANR9652I An EVALUATION LICENSE for Tivoli Storage Manager Basic Edition will expire on
08/13/2016.
ANR9652I An EVALUATION LICENSE for Tivoli Storage Manager Extended Edition will expire on
08/13/2016.
ANR2828I Server is licensed to support IBM System Storage Archive Manager.
ANR2828I Server is licensed to support Tivoli Storage Manager Basic Edition.
ANR2828I Server is licensed to support Tivoli Storage Manager Extended Edition.
ANR2560I Schedule manager started.
ANR0984I Process 1 for EXPIRE INVENTORY (Automatic) started in the BACKGROUND at 01:58:03 PM.
ANR0811I Inventory client file expiration started as process 1.
ANR0167I Inventory file expiration process 1 processed for 0 minutes.
ANR0812I Inventory file expiration process 1 completed: processed 0 nodes, examined 0 objects,
deleting 0 backup objects, 0 archive objects, 0 DB backup volumes, and 0 recovery plan files. 0
objects were retried and 0 errors were encountered.
ANR0985I Process 1 for EXPIRE INVENTORY (Automatic) running in the BACKGROUND completed with
completion state SUCCESS at 01:58:03 PM.
ANR0993I Server initialization complete.
ANR0916I TIVOLI STORAGE MANAGER distributed by Tivoli is now ready for use.
TSM:TSM0>q admin
ANR2017I Administrator SERVER_CONSOLE issued command: QUERY ADMIN

Administrator        Days Since       Days Since      Locked?       Privilege Classes
Name                Last Access     Password Set
--------------     ------------     ------------     ----------     -----------------------
ADMIN                        <1               <1         No         System
ADMIN_CENTER                 halt
ANR2017I Administrator SERVER_CONSOLE issued command: HALT
ANR1912I Stopping the activity log because of a server shutdown.
ANR0369I Stopping the database manager because of a server shutdown.
ANR0991I Server shutdown complete.

[root@300 ~]# hagrp -unfreeze TSM0_site

[root@300 ~]# hares -state | grep TSM0 | grep 302
TSM0_dg               State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_ip_bond0         State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_active_log   State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_archive_log  State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_01        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_02        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_03        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_01 State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_02 State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_db_backup_03 State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_instance     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_01     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_02     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_03     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_04     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_05     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_mnt_pool0_06     State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_nic_bond0        State                 300  ONLINE
TSM0_server           State                 300  OFFLINE

[root@301 ~]# hares -online TSM0_server -sys 300

Ignore these errors below during first IBM TSM server startup.

IGNORE | ERRORS TO IGNORE DURING FIRST IBM TSM SERVER START
IGNORE | 
IGNORE | DBI1306N  The instance profile is not defined.
IGNORE |
IGNORE | Explanation:
IGNORE |
IGNORE | The instance is not defined in the target machine registry.
IGNORE |
IGNORE | User response:
IGNORE |
IGNORE | Specify an existing instance name or create the required instance.

Install IBM TSM Server Licenses

Screenshots from that process below.

Lets now register licenses for the IBM TSM.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>register license file=/opt/tivoli/tsm/server/bin/tsmee.lic
ANR2852I Current license information:
ANR2853I New license information:
ANR2828I Server is licensed to support Tivoli Storage Manager Basic Edition.
ANR2828I Server is licensed to support Tivoli Storage Manager Extended Edition.

IBM TSM Client Configuration on the IBM TSM Server Nodes

[root@300 ~]# cat > /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.opt << __EOF
SERVERNAME TSM0
__EOF

[root@301 ~]# cat > /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.opt << __EOF
SERVERNAME TSM0
__EOF

[root@300 ~]# cat > /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.sys << __EOF
SERVERNAME TSM0
COMMMethod TCPip
TCPPort 1500
TCPSERVERADDRESS localhost
SCHEDLOGNAME /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmsched.log
ERRORLOGNAME /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmerror.log
SCHEDLOGRETENTION 7 D
ERRORLOGRETENTION 7 D
__EOF

[root@301 ~]# cat > /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.sys << __EOF
SERVERNAME TSM0
COMMMethod TCPip
TCPPort 1500
TCPSERVERADDRESS localhost
SCHEDLOGNAME /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmsched.log
ERRORLOGNAME /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmerror.log
SCHEDLOGRETENTION 7 D
ERRORLOGRETENTION 7 D
__EOF

Install lin_tape on IBM TSM Server

[root@ALL]# uname -r
2.6.32-504.el6.x86_64

[root@ALL]# uname -r | sed 's|.x86_64||g'
2.6.32-504.el6

[root@ALL]# yum --showduplicates list kernel-devel | grep 2.6.32-504.el6
kernel-devel.x86_64            2.6.32-504.el6                 rhel-6-server-rpms

[root@ALL]# yum install rpm-build kernel-devel-2.6.32-504.el6

[root@ALL]# rpm -Uvh /root/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/lin_tape-3.0.10-1.x86_64.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:lin_tape               ########################################### [100%]
Starting lin_tape...
lin_tape loaded

[root@ALL]# rpm -Uvh lin_taped-3.0.10-rhel6.x86_64.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:lin_taped              ########################################### [100%]
Starting lin_tape...
lin_taped loaded

[root@ALL]# /etc/init.d/lin_tape start
Starting lin_tape... lin_taped already running. Abort!

[root@ALL]# /etc/init.d/lin_tape restart
Shutting down lin_tape... lin_taped unloaded
Starting lin_tape...

Library Configuration

This is quite unusual configuration as the IBM TS3310 library with 4 LTO4 drives are logically partitioned into two logical libraries with 2 drives dedicated to Dell/EMC Networker and 2 drives dedicated to the IBM TSM server. Such library is shown below.

The changers and tape drives for each backup system.

Networker | (L) 000001317577_LLA changer0
TSM       | (L) 000001317577_LLB changer1_persistent_TSM0
Networker | (1) 7310132058       tape0
Networker | (2) 7310295146       tape1
TSM       | (3) 7310214751       tape2_persistent_TSM0
TSM       | (4) 7310214904       tape3_persistent_TSM0

[root@300 ~]# find /dev/IBM*
/dev/IBMchanger0
/dev/IBMchanger1
/dev/IBMSpecial
/dev/IBMtape
/dev/IBMtape0
/dev/IBMtape0n
/dev/IBMtape1
/dev/IBMtape1n
/dev/IBMtape2
/dev/IBMtape2n
/dev/IBMtape3
/dev/IBMtape3n

We will use UDEV for persistent configuration.

[root@300 ~]# udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/IBMtape0)    | grep -i serial
    ATTR{serial_num}=="7310132058"
[root@300 ~]# udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/IBMtape1)    | grep -i serial
    ATTR{serial_num}=="7310295146"
[root@300 ~]# udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/IBMtape2)    | grep -i serial
    ATTR{serial_num}=="7310214751"
[root@300 ~]# udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/IBMtape3)    | grep -i serial
    ATTR{serial_num}=="7310214904"

[root@300 ~]# udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/IBMchanger0) | grep -i serial
    ATTR{serial_num}=="000001317577_LLA"
[root@300 ~]# udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/IBMchanger1) | grep -i serial
    ATTR{serial_num}=="000001317577_LLB"

[root@300 ~]# cat /proc/scsi/IBM*
lin_tape version: 3.0.10
lin_tape major number: 239
Attached Changer Devices:
Number  model       SN                HBA             SCSI            FO Path
0       3576-MTL    000001317577_LLA  qla2xxx         2:0:1:1         NA
1       3576-MTL    000001317577_LLB  qla2xxx         4:0:1:1         NA
lin_tape version: 3.0.10
lin_tape major number: 239
Attached Tape Devices:
Number  model       SN                HBA             SCSI            FO Path
0       ULT3580-TD4 7310132058        qla2xxx         2:0:0:0         NA
1       ULT3580-TD4 7310295146        qla2xxx         2:0:1:0         NA
2       ULT3580-TD4 7310214751        qla2xxx         4:0:0:0         NA
3       ULT3580-TD4 7310214904        qla2xxx         4:0:1:0         NA

[root@300 ~]# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/98-lin_tape.rules
KERNEL=="IBMtape*", SYSFS{serial_num}=="7310132058", MODE="0660", SYMLINK="IBMtape0"
KERNEL=="IBMtape*", SYSFS{serial_num}=="7310295146", MODE="0660", SYMLINK="IBMtape1"
KERNEL=="IBMtape*", SYSFS{serial_num}=="7310214751", MODE="0660", SYMLINK="IBMtape2_persistent_TSM0"
KERNEL=="IBMtape*", SYSFS{serial_num}=="7310214904", MODE="0660", SYMLINK="IBMtape3_persistent_TSM0"
KERNEL=="IBMchanger*", ATTR{serial_num}=="000001317577_LLB", MODE="0660", SYMLINK="IBMchanger1_persistent_TSM0"

[root@301 ~]# /etc/init.d/lin_tape stop
Shutting down lin_tape... lin_taped unloaded

[root@301 ~]# rmmod lin_tape

[root@301 ~]# /etc/init.d/lin_tape start
Starting lin_tape...

New persistent devices.

[root@301 ~]# find /dev/IBM*
/dev/IBMchanger0
/dev/IBMchanger1
/dev/IBMchanger1_persistent_TSM0
/dev/IBMSpecial
/dev/IBMtape
/dev/IBMtape0
/dev/IBMtape0n
/dev/IBMtape1
/dev/IBMtape1n
/dev/IBMtape2
/dev/IBMtape2n
/dev/IBMtape2_persistent_TSM0
/dev/IBMtape3
/dev/IBMtape3n
/dev/IBMtape3_persistent_TSM0

Lets update the paths to the tape drives now.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>query path f=d

                   Source Name: TSM0_SITE
                   Source Type: SERVER
              Destination Name: TS3310
              Destination Type: LIBRARY
                       Library:
                     Node Name:
                        Device: /dev/IBMchanger0
              External Manager:
              ZOS Media Server:
                  Comm. Method:
                           LUN:
                     Initiator: 0
                     Directory:
                       On-Line: Yes
Last Update by (administrator): ADMIN
         Last Update Date/Time: 09/16/2014 13:36:14

                   Source Name: TSM0_SITE
                   Source Type: SERVER
              Destination Name: DRIVE0
              Destination Type: DRIVE
                       Library: TS3310
                     Node Name:
                        Device: /dev/IBMtape0
              External Manager:
              ZOS Media Server:
                  Comm. Method:
                           LUN:
                     Initiator: 0
                     Directory:
                       On-Line: Yes
Last Update by (administrator): SERVER_CONSOLE
         Last Update Date/Time: 07/14/2016 14:02:02

                   Source Name: TSM0_SITE
                   Source Type: SERVER
              Destination Name: DRIVE1
              Destination Type: DRIVE
                       Library: TS3310
                     Node Name:
                        Device: /dev/IBMtape1
              External Manager:
              ZOS Media Server:
                  Comm. Method:
                           LUN:
                     Initiator: 0
                     Directory:
                       On-Line: Yes
Last Update by (administrator): SERVER_CONSOLE
         Last Update Date/Time: 07/14/2016 13:59:48

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE TS3310 SRCType=SERVER DESTType=LIBRary online=no
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 has been updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE TS3310 SRCType=SERVER DESTType=LIBRary device=/dev/IBMchanger1_persistent_TSM0
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 has been updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE TS3310 SRCType=SERVER DESTType=LIBRary online=yes
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 has been updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE1           SERial=AUTODetect element=AUTODetect
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE1 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE1         online=no
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE1 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE1           SERial=AUTODetect element=AUTODetect
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE1 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE1         online=yes
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE1 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE1           SERial=AUTODetect element=AUTODetect
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE1 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE1         online=yes
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE1 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE DRIVE0 SRCType=SERVER autodetect=yes DESTType=DRIVE library=ts3310 device=/dev/IBMtape2_persistent_TSM0
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 DRIVE0 has been updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update drive TS3310           DRIVE0           SERial=AUTODetect element=AUTODetect
ANR8467I Drive DRIVE0 in library TS3310 updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE DRIVE1 SRCType=SERVER autodetect=yes DESTType=DRIVE library=ts3310 device=/dev/IBMtape3_persistent_TSM0
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 DRIVE1 has been updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE DRIVE1 SRCType=SERVER DESTType=DRIVE library=ts3310 online=yes
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 DRIVE1 has been updated.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>update path TSM0_SITE DRIVE0 SRCType=SERVER DESTType=DRIVE library=ts3310 online=yes
ANR1722I A path from TSM0_SITE to TS3310 DRIVE0 has been updated.

Lets verify that our library works properly.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>audit library TS3310 checklabel=barcode
ANS8003I Process number 2 started.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>query proc

Process      Process Description      Process Status
  Number
--------     --------------------     -------------------------------------------------
       2     AUDIT LIBRARY            ANR8459I Auditing volume inventory for library
                                       TS3310.


tsm: TSM0_SITE>query act
(...)

08/04/2016 14:30:41      ANR2017I Administrator ADMIN issued command: AUDIT
                          LIBRARY TS3310 checklabel=barcode  (SESSION: 8)
08/04/2016 14:30:41      ANR0984I Process 2 for AUDIT LIBRARY started in the
                          BACKGROUND at 02:30:41 PM. (SESSION: 8, PROCESS: 2)
08/04/2016 14:30:41      ANR8457I AUDIT LIBRARY: Operation for library TS3310
                          started as process 2. (SESSION: 8, PROCESS: 2)
08/04/2016 14:30:46      ANR8358E Audit operation is required for library TS3310.
                          (SESSION: 8, PROCESS: 2)
08/04/2016 14:30:51      ANR8439I SCSI library TS3310 is ready for operations.
                          (SESSION: 8, PROCESS: 2)

(...)

08/04/2016 14:31:26      ANR0985I Process 2 for AUDIT LIBRARY running in the
                          BACKGROUND completed with completion state SUCCESS at
                          02:31:26 PM. (SESSION: 8, PROCESS: 2)

(...)

IBM TSM Storage Pool Configuration

IBM TSM container storage pool creation.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>define stgpool POOL0_stgFC stgtype=directory
ANR2249I Storage pool POOL0_stgFC is defined.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>define stgpooldirectory POOL0_stgFC /tsm0/pool0/pool0_01,/tsm0/pool0/pool0_02,/tsm0/pool0/pool0_03,/tsm0/pool0/pool0_04,/tsm0/pool0/pool0_05,/tsm0/pool0/pool0_06
ANR3254I Storage pool directory /tsm0/pool0/pool0_01 was defined in storage pool POOL0_stgFC.
ANR3254I Storage pool directory /tsm0/pool0/pool0_02 was defined in storage pool POOL0_stgFC.
ANR3254I Storage pool directory /tsm0/pool0/pool0_03 was defined in storage pool POOL0_stgFC.
ANR3254I Storage pool directory /tsm0/pool0/pool0_04 was defined in storage pool POOL0_stgFC.
ANR3254I Storage pool directory /tsm0/pool0/pool0_05 was defined in storage pool POOL0_stgFC.
ANR3254I Storage pool directory /tsm0/pool0/pool0_06 was defined in storage pool POOL0_stgFC.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>q stgpooldirectory

Storage Pool Name     Directory                                         Access
-----------------     ---------------------------------------------     ------------
POOL0_stgFC           /tsm0/pool0/pool0_01                              Read/Write
POOL0_stgFC           /tsm0/pool0/pool0_02                              Read/Write
POOL0_stgFC           /tsm0/pool0/pool0_03                              Read/Write
POOL0_stgFC           /tsm0/pool0/pool0_04                              Read/Write
POOL0_stgFC           /tsm0/pool0/pool0_05                              Read/Write
POOL0_stgFC           /tsm0/pool0/pool0_06                              Read/Write

IBM TSM Backup Policies Configuration

Below is an example policy.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>def dom  FS backret=30 archret=30
ANR1500I Policy domain FS defined.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>def pol  FS FS
ANR1510I Policy set FS defined in policy domain FS.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>def mg   FS FS FS_1DAY
ANR1520I Management class FS_1DAY defined in policy domain FS, set FS.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>def co   FS FS FS_1DAY   STANDARD type=backup destination=POOL0_STGFC verexists=32 verdeleted=1 retextra=31 retonly=14
ANR1530I Backup copy group STANDARD defined in policy domain FS, set FS, management class FS_1DAY.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>def mg   FS FS FS_1MONTH
ANR1520I Management class FS_1MONTH defined in policy domain FS, set FS.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>def co   FS FS FS_1MONTH STANDARD type=backup destination=POOL0_STGFC  verexists=4 verdeleted=1 retextra=91 retonly=14
ANR1530I Backup copy group STANDARD defined in policy domain FS, set FS, management class FS_1MONTH.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>as defmg FS FS FS_1DAY
ANR1538I Default management class set to FS_1DAY for policy domain FS, set FS.

tsm: TSM0_SITE>act pol  FS FS
ANR1554W DEFAULT Management class FS_1DAY in policy set FS FS does not have an ARCHIVE copygroup:  files will not be archived by default if this set is activated.

Do you wish to proceed? (Yes (Y)/No (N)) y
ANR1554W DEFAULT Management class FS_1DAY in policy set FS FS does not have an ARCHIVE copygroup:  files will not be archived by default if this set is activated.
ANR1514I Policy set FS activated in policy domain FS.

I hope that the amount of instructions did not discouraged you from one of the best enterprise backup systems – the IBM TSM (now IBM Spectrum Protect) and on of the best high availability cluster – the Veritas Cluster Server 🙂

EOF