3

We have a number of Xen virtual machines that use disk image files.

disk = ["file:/xen/vbd/something.vbd,sda1,w"]

We'd like to use DRBD to replicate these files for backup (as opposed to the mess of MySQL replication and nightly rsyncs we have at the moment). But I don't seem to understand how to make it work.

We can bind a file to a loopback device with losetup:

# losetup /dev/loop0 /xen/vbd/something.vbd

And point DRBD to that device:

device  /dev/drbd1;
disk    /dev/loop0;

But the loopback isn't stable - it isn't there on reboot, and could easily have been attached to loop1, loop2 etc. It isn't exactly a valid option for a server if it needs human interaction to recover with a power interruption.

What am I missing?

4 Answers 4

4

There is always the old-fashioned way:

mknod /dev/loop255 b 7 255
losetup /dev/loop255 mydisk.img

Use a high random number to avoid a potential conflict.

1

What do you mean with the "the loopback isn't stable"? What if you just create a shell script containing something like

losetup /dev/loop0 /xen/vdb/something.vdb
losetup /dev/loop1 /xen/vdb/something2.vdb
losetup /dev/loop2 /xen/vdb/something3.vdb

and put that at system startup before the xen guests start (or use some more official way to setup permanent loopback images, haven't done that)? Wouldn't the /dev/loop0 always point that the same image then? What am I missing? :)

2
  • I guess what I'm asking is, is there a recommended way? Am I doing it wrong by just hooking up the loopback myself? Jul 30, 2010 at 12:04
  • By not "stable", what I mean is that there's nothing stopping some other program from grabbing loop0 simply because it's the next one. If there was a way to make loop devices that were named rather than numbered, that would help. Jul 30, 2010 at 15:38
0

you can create a init script that creates the loop device at startup. Something like this.

1
  • Broken link... stackoverflow and friends recommend you copy/paste the relevant portions.
    – cmc
    Mar 1, 2013 at 14:10
0

Here's my bare bones loop device init script. Tested on Debian Squeeze.

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          drbd_loopbacks
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start daemon at boot time
# Description:       Enable service provided by daemon.
### END INIT INFO

XEN_PATH=/home/xen/domains
DRBD_PATH=/home/drbd

case "$1" in
start)
  losetup /dev/loop45   $XEN_PATH/int/disk.img
  losetup /dev/loop63   $DRBD_PATH/meta.img
  ;;

stop)
  losetup -d /dev/loop45
  losetup -d /dev/loop63
  ;;
*)
  echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
  exit 1
esac

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .