The Affect of Booting Into Single-User Mode on RAID-1 Volumes

Sometimes, you may need to boot a system with mirrors for root (/), /usr, and swap, the so-called “boot” file systems, into single-user mode (by using the boot -s command). In this case, these mirrors and possibly all mirrors on the system will appear in the “Needing Maintenance” state when viewed with the metastat command. Furthermore, if writes occur to these slices, the metastat command shows an increase in dirty regions on the mirrors.

This situation appears to be potentially dangerous. However, the metasync -r command, which normally runs during boot to resynchronize mirrors, is interrupted when the system is booted into single-user mode. Once the system is rebooted, the metasync -r command will run and resynchronize all mirrors.

If this situation is a concern, you can run the metasync -r command manually.