Topic: SATA RAID on Dell SC420 SME 7

[gyrcom]

Have Sata Raid working perfectly on SME7A14. Totally a breeze to set up. I tried to get it working by Compiling ata_piix drivers on 6.0.1 and a lot of fiddling and finally gave up.
Firstly turn off SATA raid in the bios, We are just going to use the Linux software raid as the CERC stuff that the dell uses won't work here and just leave the drives as individual drives. Install SME from the CD in the usual way. Only problem is that the second drive will be "dirty" .
Log into a root shell and add the second drive to the array and it will sync up.
Start with checking to see all is well with the drives with

#cat /proc/mdstat

to see the following or something just like it

Personalities : [raid1]
read_ahead 1024 sectors
mdo : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
      526777 blocks [2/1] [U_]

The 2/1 and the U_ shows that only one of the drives is working in the array.
You may also try this for more info.

#mdadm --detail /dev/md0

To get the drive to sync I typed

#mdadm /dev/md0 -a /dev/sdb1
#mdadm /dev/md1 -a /dev/sdb3
#mdadm /dev/md2 -a /dev/sdb2

Notice that you have to get the device partitions to jive with the device partitions of /dev/sda

two hours later all was synced. Finally this cheap dell server alternative is worth perchasing.

[mwasi]

Hi,

Good post! I'm in a similar situation.

I'm new to sme server. I'm looking forward to testing it out.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are my server specs.

520, 2.8GHz/1MB Cache, 32bit P4, 800MHz Front Side Bus for PESC420
256MB DDR2,400MHZ,1X256MB ECC 1R DIMMS for PowerEdge SC420
No Keyboard Option
No Monitor Option
80GB, SATA, 1 inch, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive for PE SC 1.44MB, 3.5 in, Integrated Floppy Drive, PowerEdge SC
On-Board NIC $0.00
48X, Compact Disk Drive, 680M I, Half Height, Black, for PowerEdge SC
80GB, SATA, 1 inch, 7.2K RPM Additional Hard Drive for PE SC
C3,Motherboard SATA, RAID 1 2HDD, CBL, PESC420

Re: ver 7.0 alpha 21

The install appeared to go smoothly. Upon re-boot I get the dell open manage software. I turned off the BIOS RAID. I think I am missing something. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Mark

[CharlieBrady]

Finally this cheap dell server alternative is worth perchasing.

Anyone wanna send me one?

[CharlieBrady]

Re: ver 7.0 alpha 21

The install appeared to go smoothly. Upon re-boot I get the dell open manage software. I turned off the BIOS RAID. I think I am missing something. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Please post *any* issues with 7.0alpha (only) to the bug tracker at http://smeserver.sourceforge.net/. That's the only way that problems will be investigated and hopefully tracked down and fixed.

Thanks.

[mwasi]

ok, done.

Thanks
Mark

[CharlieBrady]

ok, done.

You've sent me one! Fantastic!

[mwasi]

Hi Guys,

Any suggestions? I'm stuck. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks
Mark

[kruhm]

@gyrcom

mdo : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]

Is this on the same controller?

@mwasi
If you are getting the dell open manage software, then it's still on the hard drive from the factory in the "Dell utilities partition." This partition is usually fat16 and should be deleted (it may show up as an HPFS partition).

However you may be just getting the prompt asking if you want to go to the partition (even though it doesn't exist).

You should wipe the drive before you begin.

[gyrcom]

I've just recieved another SC420 and plan to use it for testing further issues with 7alpha. I will record here my results.

[mwasi]

Thanks gyrcom kruhm!

Will try your suggestion kruhm.

Mark