Topic: Adding an existing RAID5 to a SME 7 HOWTO

[paquerette]

No... I can't believe it... I'm the only Alien on earth willing to configure a Raid5 on a SME Server...

Can you give me the phone of The Guiness World Record Book...

[CharlieBrady]

No... I can't believe it... I'm the only Alien on earth willing to configure a Raid5 on a SME Server...

No, you are (apparently) the only one trying to do it the hard way. Others don't have the single system disk.

Please don't demand support. It's free software. You are free to use it if you please. Nobody has an obligation to help you.

[paquerette]

I don't demand anything... I'm just surprise that nobody did this thing... I'm surprise and I tell it with some kind of joke...

Having a single disk for the system is not the matter...  (I just don't have another 120 GB disk... and since, the system installation is quick, I don't really need it, it's a home server)

the matter is the additionnal Raid 5 configuration... I don't think it is that unusual.

[CharlieBrady]

Having a single disk for the system is not the matter...  

Yes it is. Take it out and the installation should "just work". If it doesn't, please report via the Bug Tracker.

[paquerette]

there's must be a misunderstanding...

I only have one disk for my system... so if I remove it... the system won't boot as there is no bootable partion in the machine (the only drives left are the 4 250GB which are here for data, not system).

What I'm interested in, is to configure my raid 5 for data only, seperated from the system that mount it....

I'm about to succeed, I manage to have my raid5 remounted... I've just some few configuration file to modify so that the system starts without error.

I've not turn on quota yet, and there's a strange message :

ERROR : PDC : zero sectors on /dev/sdb

(same message for sdc, sdd, but not for sda)

[CharlieBrady]

What I'm interested in, is to configure my raid 5 for data only, seperated from the system that mount it....

I know that. But if you wanted a simple life rather than a challenge, you would put the system and the data on raid5 - I believe that works "out of the box".

My statement stands - the reason that no-one else is seeing the problem you are seeing is likely because no-one else is trying to do what you are doing, which is quite non-standard, and not supported at all by the stock software.

[paquerette]

Well, my raid 5 with 4 250GB has 688GB of usable space... (and may be growing as I will add additionnal 250GB drives)

This space is for data I want to store with some security but these data are not vital, so no backup (I couldn't affort a backup solution for all that GB anyway).

Imagine, that I put the system on it has you suggest and use almost all space on it...

And for whatever reason, I want to reinstall the sytem... Let's say a SME Server : It erase all on install, or another system : I'll have to clean up the drive before installation, use an advanced mode at the installation in order to reuse the existing partition instead of erasing the disk.

Maybe, there's an easy solution, but I currently don't see it...

whereas with a seperate drive, I can reinstall the system whitout touching my data or have to back it up... (It cant be cumbersome to back up almost a Tera)

[CharlieBrady]

And for whatever reason, I want to reinstall the sytem...

So you are going to all this trouble now because you one day might want to reinstall without deleting the data ..

[paquerette]

yes... this can happen, this will happen, and has to be anticipated...

And Data are the purpose of this installation so... yes I do care about the data that I don't want to delete.

On this machine it had a fedora core, a e-smith 5.6b4 (or something like that, just before the 6 version), then a gentoo, and now a SME 7...

So I might not want to reinstall, I certainly will...

Any constructive ideas would have been useful instead of telling me you're not pleased with the way I see things (based on my needs, not yours)

[icpix]

Attach your 4 data drives to an addon hardware RAID card. [SOLVED]

[paquerette]

Attach your 4 data drives to an addon hardware RAID card. [SOLVED]

I didn't understand...

Anyway, my problem is solved.

I've just make the test to reinstall, remount the raid5 array:  data are preserved. I'll update the first message.

I still have some strange error at boot time, but the array is functionnal.

here is the error :

Code: [Select]



[root@www ~]# dmraid -v -ay
ERROR: pdc: zero sectors on /dev/sdb
ERROR: pdc: setting up RAID device /dev/sdb
ERROR: pdc: zero sectors on /dev/sdc
ERROR: pdc: setting up RAID device /dev/sdc
ERROR: pdc: zero sectors on /dev/sdd
ERROR: pdc: setting up RAID device /dev/sdd
pdc_dbefhhji already active
INFO: Activating stripe RAID set "pdc_dbefhhji"
ERROR: dos: reading /dev/mapper/pdc_dbefhhji[Invalid argument]




this error : ERROR: dos: reading /dev/mapper/pdc_dbefhhji[Invalid argument]

appears alone when only the /dev/hda is plugged. others above appears when 4 sata drives are plugged.

Maybe it's an Irq handling issue with the motherboard.

With my sata controller card, when I boot with no option, the system hangs up when loading the silicon image driver (raid card controller).

I've tried with the boot option acpi=no, I can make the installation, but once the 4 sata drives are pluged I've an IRQ error (see below) and it hangs up the system.

With irqpoll option, the system is functionnal with sata drives plugged, but I still have the IRQ errors on boot (but non blocking)

here is the irq error :

Code: [Select]


irq 12: nobody cared! (screaming interrupt?)
irq 12: Please try booting with acpi=off and report a bug
 [<c0107ea3>] __report_bad_irq+0x3a/0x77
 [<c0108361>] note_interrupt+0x191/0x1b7
 [<c0108866>] do_IRQ+0x209/0x2bf
 [<c0311588>] common_interrupt+0x18/0x20
 [<c0126ab4>] __do_softirq+0x2c/0x79
 [<c010934c>] do_softirq+0x46/0x4d
 =======================
 [<c0108910>] do_IRQ+0x2b3/0x2bf
 [<c0311588>] common_interrupt+0x18/0x20
 [<c010403b>] default_idle+0x23/0x29
 [<c010408f>] cpu_idle+0x1f/0x34
 [<c03ba6b9>] start_kernel+0x214/0x216
handlers:
[<f086888a>] (ata_interrupt+0x0/0x1ba [libata])
Disabling IRQ #12



[mrjhb3]

... So for my RAID 5 with 4 disk, I've set raid5 level, 4 drives (1 spare + 3 working drives), and it's identifier.

I haven't done any raid 5 yet on SME 7, so I'm trying to muttle through what you have done.  I have one question, in your howto, where have you set up that one of these drives will be a hot spare?  You defined all of the 250GB drives to be raid 5.

Thanks,

John Bennett

[Elluminatus]

Hi,
this is my first message in this board and i am lucky that i found a special SME Board.

And now i have 2 questions,

first is it possible to "rename" a Raid5? I build an Raid5 Array on an other computer. I named the Array /dev/md2. Now i have the Problem that SME 7.1 already build a Raid1 md1 and a md2. So how can i "rename" the old /dev/md2 Raid5 Array to /dev/md0.

Changing the settings in /dev/mdadm.conf isn´t enough, right?

And my second question:

I have build a SME 7.1 Server with one 6,4 GB HDD. The server will start like a charm. But when i build the existing Raid 5 with 3 40 GB HDD into the System with the 6,4 Boot HDD the system will start until the HDD will displayed from the BIOS. Next screen ist normally the GRUB Screen but befor this Screen will start the system stops. Do you have any idea why this happend?

Thank you for your help
Greetings E.

[Gaston94]

I,

Hi,
this is my first message in this board and i am lucky that i found a special SME Board.

And now i have 2 questions,

first is it possible to "rename" a Raid5? I build an Raid5 Array on an other computer. I named the Array /dev/md2. Now i have the Problem that SME 7.1 already build a Raid1 md1 and a md2. So how can i "rename" the old /dev/md2 Raid5 Array to /dev/md0.

Bad idea, you'd better starting your new Raid device with a new ID

Code: [Select]

# mdadm --assemble --run /dev/md3 /dev/sdxx /dev/sdyy /dev/sdzz
G.
PS you should also start a specific thread for your questions

[cthippo]

What I'm interested in, is to configure my raid 5 for data only, seperated from the system that mount it....

  If it makes you feel better, you're not the only one who wants to do this, though, given the headacheds you seem to be having, I'm tempted to move on to a different distro to solve the problem.