Author Topic: Merge two JFS volumes  (Read 22349 times)

Doug Bissett

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Merge two JFS volumes
« on: March 13, 2014, 09:01:31 pm »
I am using the JFS that comes with eCS 2.1. I have two volumes: V: which is roughly 50 GB, and W: which is roughly 200 GB. Both are type 35 (not bootable). There is enough room on W: for everything that is on V:. I wish to move everything to W: (do I have to do that?), then merge V: with W: (which I think can be done), eliminating V:. V: is ahead of W:, physically.

Has anybody done it? How? Are there any tips?

Thanks...

Pete

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2014, 12:27:04 am »
Hi Doug

Why not xcopy everything off both V: and W: to a backup device eg large-ish USB drive, delete the V: and W: drives and then create 1 volume with whatever drive letter from the free space.


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Pete

Doug Bissett

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2014, 06:11:24 am »
Hi Doug

Why not xcopy everything off both V: and W: to a backup device eg large-ish USB drive, delete the V: and W: drives and then create 1 volume with whatever drive letter from the free space.

Well. it is about 150 GB of data. I have it backed up to a USB drive already (except for a quick RSYNC to get the latest updates). I am just curious if anybody has actually merged two JFS drives, which was supposed to be one of the "greatest features" about JFS, when it first appeared.

If anybody has done it, I would like some tips. If not, I may give it a try (when I find the time). If it doesn't work, I can put the disk out of the USB drive into the machine (it is SATA), to cut down on the restore time. I suppose I had better test that too, before committing myself.   :)

Greggory Shaw

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2014, 09:53:15 am »

... Has anybody done it? How? Are there any tips?
....

Thanks...

I was just looking at this the other day and couldn't find anything either. Then, I saw a reference to WSEB.  I booted one up and sure enough the LVM program has the option => Expand !

Greggory


Eugene Gorbunoff

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2014, 11:51:44 am »
Don't Expand.

In this case it's impossible recover data from broken JFS volume.


Andi B.

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2014, 12:29:53 pm »
Depending if files with same names but different content are on each drive I would -
- simply copy with proper 4os2 options (update or not....)
- xcopy
- copy with LarsenCommander (asks for overwrite, read-only... files)

But I fear I don't fully understand what you're want to do as the answer is too simple.

If I ever need to 'expand' a volume I simply create another one big enough from a spare place on one of my disks, assign a temporary drive letter, copy over all, remove drive letter from old volume and assign it to the newly created one. Old volume can be delete then.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2014, 05:10:41 pm »
Quote
I booted one up and sure enough the LVM program has the option => Expand !

Yes, that is where it is done. ECS has the same menu item.

Don't Expand.

In this case it's impossible recover data from broken JFS volume.

Two comments on that: 1) It is almost impossible to recover data from a normal volume, broken or not. That is what backups are for. 2) It has been a number of years since I saw a broken volume.

I will agree that merging them might cause new problems, but that is one of the reasons why I want to give it a try. There is also one line in CONFIG.SYS, that doesn't need to be there, if it is not going to work.

Quote
But I fear I don't fully understand what you're want to do as the answer is too simple.

I am in a position where I want to merge a couple of volumes, and the LVM Expand option would seem to be an obvious answer to how to do it. I have done the method where both volumes are deleted, then create a single volume in the freed area. In fact I have two machines, with pretty much the same requirement (all on one disk), with a third that has the two volumes on separate physical disks. The third one is an old test machine, so I may try that first. I should have enough room to put all of the data on the one volume, then expand it into the freed area where the other volume is now (after freeing it). I don't think I can just paste the two volumes, and their contents, together, but I may see if there is a way to do that. In the third case, it is not possible to simply delete the two volumes, and create one in the freed area.

Since it seems that nobody has actually done it, I will need to do a bit more research, and see what happens. Somebody may find the information useful.

Thanks for the comments...

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2014, 05:52:47 pm »
As Andi wrote: Simply copy the files over to the larger volume at first.

Use DFSee to delete the smaller volume and advance the larger volume's size.

Use LVM or DFSee to adjust the drive letter.

Andreas

ivan

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2014, 07:59:27 pm »
Doug, you might be lucky with your setup but we tried it a couple of years ago (using WSeB) and it DID NOT work.  In fact the tech that was trying it ended up wiping the machine and doing a full restore from the backup.  Since then we have kept clear of doing anything like that again.

dbanet

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2014, 10:59:42 pm »
DFSee cannot neither merge, nor move, nor resize JFS volumes.

I had a positive experience with expanding JFS volumes.

You can even try it without moving data from one volume to another.

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2014, 01:01:34 pm »
DFSee cannot neither merge, nor move, nor resize JFS volumes.

That's bad news - I thought Jan has implemented that in a newer version. Thanks for the info.

dbanet

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #11 on: March 15, 2014, 05:35:06 pm »
DFSee cannot neither merge, nor move, nor resize JFS volumes.

That's bad news - I thought Jan has implemented that in a newer version. Thanks for the info.

I agree to you -- that's a big limitation. I had to zip my whole OS/2 installation on my Thinkpad, transfer it by FTP on a local server, then use valerius' boot CD and DFSee, then recreate the JFS volume on a different offset and then unzip the whole OS/2 installation back on it.

Well, I indeed had to install Windoze first...

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #12 on: March 15, 2014, 11:28:24 pm »
I have also expanded a JFS drive in just the way that Doug has proposed. Other than having a good backup, I didn't do anything special. I deleted a volume that used to contain Windows XP, and added the space to an existing 300 GB JFS volume.
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Doug Bissett

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2014, 04:04:20 am »
Well, I deleted the volume (V:) on my old test machine. It happened to be the whole physical disk. I then used LVM to extend W: (which is also a whole physical disk) into that space. I decided to reboot, before trying anything else. For some reason, that didn't go too well. I ended up having to force power off. At power on all was well, and my W: drive is that much bigger. Step 1 successful.

Then, I tried my Lenovo ThinkPad T510. That is all on one physical disk. I deleted the "extra" volume, and expanded the W: drive into the free space. Reboot went better this time, and it seems to have worked. Step 2 successful.

It will take a bit of preparation for the last one, so I will report later.

dbanet

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Re: Merge two JFS volumes
« Reply #14 on: March 16, 2014, 05:34:19 pm »
Doug, I'm just interested what will happen if you remove the second hard disk drive, to where your JFS volume was expanded, from your old test machine?

I believe IBM did everything right, and the data that is stored physically on the second HDD will just disappear from the volume, but I've never tested that. As you say, this is an old test machine, so why not test this?