Now we create the swap. We must now create a place to host our encrypted partitions. You will notice that I selected RAID rather than 4.2BSD. This was unclear from the information provided online. If you try to create the softraid on a FS labeled 4.2BSD it will fail. We label this section of the drive d or wd0d. Now we (w)rite and (q)uit.
One of my first goals for the new year was to reorganize our computer setup. Here are a few of the things I've been working on to get us ready for another year of photography.
- What's new in SoftRAID 5.8.4: New features in version 5.8.4: Adds a feature which warns the user if Secure Boot is enabled. This warning appears when the SoftRAID application is first launched, Secure Boot is enable and a SoftRAID disk is attached. Adds ability to sign up for the SoftRAID.
- OpenBSD has had softraid(4) for quite a while but OpenBSD 5.1 adds support for the root filesystem on softraid(4) for amd64, i386, and sparc64 systems. There was only one problem. I found some excellent documentation for amd64 and i386 in the form of Josh Grosse's Provisioning Root on Softraid article at the OpenBSD Journal. This except from.
- SoftRAID will run on any Mac built after 2007 which is running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. (TRIM support for SSDs requires Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later.) Unlike many applications, SoftRAID has modest requirements for system memory and disk.
- SoftRAID offers 5 RAID levels: RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 1+0. All RAID levels above RAID 0 offer data protection and redundancy. RAID 0 does not protect your data, but if you work with large temporary files (such as video scratch data) you'll love the lightening fast disk access.
For a couple years now we've used Hackintoshes (custom built computers that can run the Mac operating system) as our photography workstation computers. We made the switch to Hackintoshes because at the time Apple hadn't updated their Mac Pro line in over two years, and with a Hackintosh you can build something with similar power for a fraction of the price that Apple charges.
Fast forward to today and Apple has just recently launched their iMac Retina, and they now have a newly designed Mac Pro (which is already a year old).
I wanted to refresh our current computers, and for a long time I debated between getting the new iMac Retina, and Mac Pro. You can find reviews galore all over the internet for both computers so I'll spare you the in depth details about them.
Despite the impressive specs of the new Apple computers, we ended up keeping our current Hackintosh computers. Here's why:
The iMac retina is currently the fastest available Mac for single core processing, and it's only around 15% slower than the fastest Mac Pro for multi-core processing. A fully loaded iMac is a little over $4000, and a decently outfitted Mac Pro starts around $4000.
Our current Hackintoshes are about 30% slower than the fastest iMac Retina. That's quite a bit slower, but it's not paralyzing. I decided that the 30% increase wasn't worth the additional $8000 (we need two computers). We would also need to invest in external storage enclosures (which are expensive!).
Another detail is that the next round of processor upgrades Apple puts in their iMac Retina and Mac Pros likely won't produce much of a bump in speed – instead they'll be more energy efficient.
What that means is that we're probably looking at a couple more years with our current Hackintoshes until Apple releases something significantly faster.
Our Hackintoshes
If you're interested in learning more about Hackintoshes then you need to check out www.tonymacx86.com. You'll find all the parts lists, programs, and installation guides you need to build your own Hackintosh.
You don't need a ton of experience with computers to be able to put a Hackintosh together. I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert with computers, but it was easy to work through the guides on tonymac, and search for solutions to problems on their forum.
After having Hackintoshes for a couple years I wanted to switch back to real Apple computers. You certainly save a ton of money compared to purchasing a real Apple computer, but overall I'm not sure they're worth the trouble (especially if you use your computer professionally). Once you have the Hackintosh set up they're fairly reliable. What was frustrating was not being able to do the system software updates easily. You would have to wait for a Hackintosh patch to be released, and then you would install the patch and things like sound or internet would stop working and you would have to go searching for a solution. Eventually I stopped installing the system updates – not great.
Despite the shortcomings of Hackintoshes I'm already invested in all the hardware, and the best option for us is to continue using them for the time being. I've reformatted both our Hackintoshes and freshly installed all our software. One downside (or possible benefit) is that we have to keep using the Mavericks operating system (10.9). The new Yosemite OS (10.10) is currently too buggy with our old Hackintosh hardware. From the reviews of Yosemite, it seems like it might be a good thing that we can't upgrade – all our software still works fine anyway!
SoftRAID
One program I haven't seen the Hackintosh community talk about is SoftRAID. We've been using it for years and it's an excellent program for managing your computer's hard drives. SoftRAID isn't just for Hackintoshes, anyone with a Mac can use it!
SoftRAID recently released a new version of the program that is capable of RAID 5. What this means is that you can connect several drives to your computer to act like one big drive. The data is written across all the drives. RAID 5 also writes parity information across all the drives, so that if one hard drive fails you still have all your data, you just need to replace the failed drive with a new one and the RAID array will automatically rebuild.
Up until now mac users basically had to purchase a separate enclosure capable of RAID 5, since the software included in OSX isn't capable of RAID 5.
Another advantage of a RAID 5 array is that the read and write speeds of the array are much faster compared to using a single hard drive.
For professional photographers and videographers with a lot of data to store, RAID 5 is a good solution. You'll still need to backup your data on other hard drives, but with RAID 5 you'll be safe against a single hard drive failure.
I've setup a RAID array using seven 3TB hard drives. That gives me a total of 18TB of usable storage space (after accounting for the one extra drive required for parity). Read and write performance of the RAID 5 array is stunning:
It's much faster than a single hard disk drive, or single solid state drive.
Sure it's not as fast as a single PCI-Express solid state drive found in the Mac Pro, and if the RAID array were made of regular solid state drives instead of hard drives the speed would be much faster. However, since my existing storage setup was based around 3TB hard drives it was the most affordable option to go with 3TB drives for the RAID array.
The nice thing is that you don't need to create one big 18TB volume (and you shouldn't!). I have several small volumes (no bigger than 3TB) which makes it easy for me to backup data onto individual 3TB hard drives.
SoftRAID is especially beneficial for people using Hackintoshes professionally since with a Hackintosh you normally have a tower with tons of room to connect additional hard drives.
Even if you don't have a Hackintosh SoftRAID can still be useful. OWC has external hard drive enclosure bays available that let you connect hard drives to your computer through a Thunderbolt connection. You can even buy SoftRAID bundled with a Thunderbay.
Final Thoughts
If you're just getting into photography then I would recommend checking out Apple's iMac Retina. It offers tremendous value – you're basically purchasing a 5K screen and getting a free computer. I wish it was fast enough for us to justify an upgrade, but for now we'll keep trucking with our Hackintoshes.
Softraid 5 8 15 Equals
If you have an Apple computer with Thunderbolt and you're looking for large capacity, blazing fast, external storage then definitely check out OWCs Thunderbays and SoftRAID.
Finally, if you're interested in building a Hackintosh I would weigh carefully the costs involved (and not just in terms of the price of parts). If you're using your computer professionally then it's probably not worth going down the Hackintosh path. I personally regret the time I've spent wrestling with the computer. If you're an enthusiast interested in building computers and don't mind the extra setup work, and ongoing maintenance then it's worth further investigation (you can build a powerful computer for a fraction of the cost of a real Apple computer).
I came across a puzzling dilemma today as I was provisioning some Sun Fire V120 servers for some tests. Although somewhat old now, a 650MHz Sun Fire V120 with 3GB of memory does just fine for a lot of tasks like DNS, some basic mail processing, and static web content. One of the dilemmas I have faced in the past was running two disks in a RAID mirror. OpenBSD has had softraid(4) for quite a while but OpenBSD 5.1 adds support for the root filesystem on softraid(4) for amd64, i386, and sparc64 systems. There was only one problem.
I found some excellent documentation for amd64 and i386 in the form of Josh Grosse's Provisioning Root on Softraid article at the OpenBSD Journal. This except from the article shows how you would do the installboot 'magic' needed for root on softraid(4) to work.
The only problem is that sparc64 is a single-stage boot environment whereas amd64 and i386 are two-stage boot environments. As Josh Grosse stated, 'I never tested root-on-softraid on single-stage booting architectures. Screen focus 1 0 12. I don't have any handy. You'll have to test that yourself!'
Unfortunately, there was no follow-up to this mailing list post. Since OpenBSD is known for its excellent man pages, I thought looking there might be a good idea. The installboot(8) man page for sparc64 gave the following example.
The problem was, rather than using the hardware device name like sd0, sparc64 uses a partition name, in this case sd0a. This goes back to sparc64 being a single-stage boot environment rather than a two-stage boot environment like amd64 and i386. After trying various incarnations of this command with sd0a and sd2a, I finally figured out the right command. You really will want to use the -v flag for installboot to see what's going on. Otherwise, you will be in the dark.
Of course the device names such as sd2 will vary based on your system. My Sun Fire V120 has two 36GB SCSI disks which show up as sd0 and sd1 so when I created my softraid(4) volume it shows up as sd2. If you have two IDE disks like a Sun Fire V120 I have, then sd0 will likely be your softraid(4) volume and wd0 and wd1 will be your two disks.
The Install Process
What I did to actually create the softraid(4) came straight out of Provisioning Root on Softraid. I booted up using the bsd.rd RAMDISK kernel and select s for (S)hell at the installation prompt. In the shell, I followed a little different sequence since this is a sparc64 system, not amd64 or i386.
Your numbers will likely be somewhat different but this is the main idea. The second p prints out what your disklabel should look like with an a partition to load your kernels from, b for swap, and d for softraid(4).
If you're just getting into photography then I would recommend checking out Apple's iMac Retina. It offers tremendous value – you're basically purchasing a 5K screen and getting a free computer. I wish it was fast enough for us to justify an upgrade, but for now we'll keep trucking with our Hackintoshes.
Softraid 5 8 15 Equals
If you have an Apple computer with Thunderbolt and you're looking for large capacity, blazing fast, external storage then definitely check out OWCs Thunderbays and SoftRAID.
Finally, if you're interested in building a Hackintosh I would weigh carefully the costs involved (and not just in terms of the price of parts). If you're using your computer professionally then it's probably not worth going down the Hackintosh path. I personally regret the time I've spent wrestling with the computer. If you're an enthusiast interested in building computers and don't mind the extra setup work, and ongoing maintenance then it's worth further investigation (you can build a powerful computer for a fraction of the cost of a real Apple computer).
I came across a puzzling dilemma today as I was provisioning some Sun Fire V120 servers for some tests. Although somewhat old now, a 650MHz Sun Fire V120 with 3GB of memory does just fine for a lot of tasks like DNS, some basic mail processing, and static web content. One of the dilemmas I have faced in the past was running two disks in a RAID mirror. OpenBSD has had softraid(4) for quite a while but OpenBSD 5.1 adds support for the root filesystem on softraid(4) for amd64, i386, and sparc64 systems. There was only one problem.
I found some excellent documentation for amd64 and i386 in the form of Josh Grosse's Provisioning Root on Softraid article at the OpenBSD Journal. This except from the article shows how you would do the installboot 'magic' needed for root on softraid(4) to work.
The only problem is that sparc64 is a single-stage boot environment whereas amd64 and i386 are two-stage boot environments. As Josh Grosse stated, 'I never tested root-on-softraid on single-stage booting architectures. Screen focus 1 0 12. I don't have any handy. You'll have to test that yourself!'
Unfortunately, there was no follow-up to this mailing list post. Since OpenBSD is known for its excellent man pages, I thought looking there might be a good idea. The installboot(8) man page for sparc64 gave the following example.
The problem was, rather than using the hardware device name like sd0, sparc64 uses a partition name, in this case sd0a. This goes back to sparc64 being a single-stage boot environment rather than a two-stage boot environment like amd64 and i386. After trying various incarnations of this command with sd0a and sd2a, I finally figured out the right command. You really will want to use the -v flag for installboot to see what's going on. Otherwise, you will be in the dark.
Of course the device names such as sd2 will vary based on your system. My Sun Fire V120 has two 36GB SCSI disks which show up as sd0 and sd1 so when I created my softraid(4) volume it shows up as sd2. If you have two IDE disks like a Sun Fire V120 I have, then sd0 will likely be your softraid(4) volume and wd0 and wd1 will be your two disks.
The Install Process
What I did to actually create the softraid(4) came straight out of Provisioning Root on Softraid. I booted up using the bsd.rd RAMDISK kernel and select s for (S)hell at the installation prompt. In the shell, I followed a little different sequence since this is a sparc64 system, not amd64 or i386.
Your numbers will likely be somewhat different but this is the main idea. The second p prints out what your disklabel should look like with an a partition to load your kernels from, b for swap, and d for softraid(4).
After this, type exit to get back to the installation menu and select I for (I)nstall. Continue through the installation and select sd2 or whatever your softraid(4) disk is called when partitioning. Leave sd0 and sd1 alone in the installer. When the install finishes, format sd0a and sd1a
Softraid 5
By default, the installer ramdisk has /mnt and /mnt2 mount points. You will need a third mount point.
As long as sd2a, your softraid(4) root, is still mounted on /mnt, you need to do a couple of steps.
For OpenBSD/sparc64 to boot, it is essential that ofwboot be in your sd0a and sd1a filesystems. I found this out the hard way as well. With all of this done, use installboot to finish your install.
With that, you're done with the basic install. One other note, you will want to add your swap partitions to your fstab since they will not be automatically picked up. With that done, my fstab looks like this.
Softraid 5 8 15 Tires
Monosnap 3 5 8 qt. As you can see, I am using DUIDs rather than disk references like sd2a. The first entry is my softraid(4) root partition, sd2a on this system. The second two entries are the sd0b and sd1b swap partitions. If you're wondering how to find the DUIDs, this will get you the information for sd0.
Softraid 5 8 1500
With the install fully done and booting to root on softraid(4), it's time to start installing the other software I need.
