# Server install with multiple FreeBSD installs



## Simba7 (Sep 7, 2011)

I have a couple remote servers running Gentoo Linux at the moment. They have 2 OS partitions and 1 swap partition. The 2 OS partitions are for a "Running OS" and an "Upgraded OS". They bounce back and forth when a major update is underway and upon reboot, the other partition basically "takes over".

The question I have is this.. Can I do this on FreeBSD? I've never tried this in the past, but would definitely like to now. I would also like to do GPT and ZFS on the systems.

Under the new FreeBSD system, I would like to have 2 OS partitions; an "Uploader" partition (downloads a new image then decompresses it to one of the OS partitions), and a swap partition. I have a dedicated 40GB drive for the OS and a dedicated 1TB drive for data.


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## Sylgeist (Sep 7, 2011)

I do something like this with NanoBSD. It is designed for embedded systems, but it works well for regular installs also. There's a presentation floating around about doing ZFS/NanoBSD highly available systems that might interest you as well.


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## Simba7 (Sep 12, 2011)

Ok. I'll look into it.

I would like to have two seperate partitions with /, /var, /tmp, and /usr slices. Then update one and switch the bootloader to the secondary upon reboot and load.. thus turning the secondary into the new primary. I would have the swap as its own partition, though.


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## jem (Sep 12, 2011)

You could possibly use ZFS' capabilities to achieve this, along with the manageBE script.


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