In addition to physical disks such as floppies, CDs, and hard drives, FreeBSD also supports virtual disks.
These include network file systems such as the Network File System and Coda, memory-based file systems, and file-backed file systems.
According to the FreeBSD version, the tools used for the creation and use of file-backed and memory-based file systems differ.
Use devfs(5) to allocate device nodes transparently for the user.
mdconfig(8) is used to configure and enable memory disks, md(4), under FreeBSD. To use mdconfig(8), md(4) must be first loaded. When using a custom kernel configuration file, ensure it includes this line:
mdconfig(8) supports several types of memory backed virtual disks: memory disks allocated with malloc(9) and memory disks using a file or swap space as backing. One possible use is the mounting of CD images.
To mount an existing file system image:
mdconfig
to Mount an Existing
File System Image#
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f diskimage
-u 0
#
mount /dev/md0
/mnt
To create a new file system image with mdconfig(8):
mdconfig
#
dd if=/dev/zero of=newimage
bs=1k count=5
k
5120+0 records in
5120+0 records out
#
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f newimage
-u 0
#
bsdlabel -w md0
auto
#
newfs md0
a
/dev/md0a: 5.0MB (10224 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
using 4 cylinder groups of 1.25MB, 80 blks, 192 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
160, 2720, 5280, 7840
#
mount /dev/md0
a /mnt
#
df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md0a 4710 4 4330 0% /mntIf unit number is not specified with
-u
, mdconfig(8) uses the
md(4) automatic allocation to select an unused device.
The name of the allocated unit will be output to stdout, such
as md4
. Refer to mdconfig(8)
for more details about.
While mdconfig(8) is useful, it takes several command lines to create a file-backed file system. FreeBSD also comes with mdmfs(8) which automatically configures a md(4) disk using mdconfig(8), puts a UFS file system on it using newfs(8), and mounts it using mount(8). For example, to create and mount the same file system image as above, type the following:
mdmfs
#
dd if=/dev/zero of=newimage
bs=1k count=5
k
5120+0 records in
5120+0 records out
#
mdmfs -F newimage
-s 5
m md0
/mnt
#
df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md0 4718 4 4338 0% /mntWhen md
is used without a unit number,
mdmfs(8) uses the md(4) auto-unit feature to
automatically select an unused device. For more details
about mdmfs(8), refer to its manual page.
For a memory-based file system, “swap backing” should normally be used. This does not mean that the memory disk will be swapped out to disk by default, but rather that the memory disk will be allocated from a memory pool which can be swapped out to disk if needed. It is also possible to create memory-based disks which are malloc(9) backed, but using large malloc backed memory disks can result in a system panic if the kernel runs out of memory.
mdconfig
#
mdconfig -a -t swap -s 5
m -u 1
#
newfs -U md1
/dev/md1: 5.0MB (10240 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
using 4 cylinder groups of 1.27MB, 81 blks, 192 inodes.
with soft updates
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
160, 2752, 5344, 7936
#
mount /dev/md1
/mnt
#
df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md1 4718 4 4338 0% /mntmdmfs
#
mdmfs -s 5
m md2
/mnt
#
df /mnt
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/md2 4846 2 4458 0% /mntWhen a memory-based or file-based file system is no longer in use, its resources should be released back to the system. First, unmount the file system, then use mdconfig(8) to detach the disk from the system and release the resources.
For example, to detach and free all resources used by
/dev/md4
:
#
mdconfig -d -u 4
It is possible to list information about configured
md(4) devices by running
mdconfig -l
.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.