Topic: Identical Raid not building

[jameswilson]

I have 2 identical drives both wd 82Gig
both show as the same in the bios and have the same cylinder heads etc

I installed sme with 1 drive and planned to add this drive later (ie now)
when i goto admin and manage disk redunancy
used hda there is an unused disk etc
selecy yes
then

the command /sbin/e-smith/add_mirror -f hda hdc failed
This configuration is onot yet fully supported in these screens?

So how do i add my second drive to be a mirror of my first
the only thing i can think of is that there is a slave cd on the primary ide could this be causing my problem, Also the disk was used previously i ahve removed the partitions but may be something is left?

Regards

James

[jsheline2003]

I have only been able to get the software raid to work properly once. I got the 30 Gig HDs both synced up and was able to pull either of the drives and the machine would still boot. But, when I put the drives back together in the array it shows "unclean" and there was no way to fix that that I saw. I'm no linux guru so, to manually do it is almost impossible for me.

I couldn't get the 40 GIG Western Digital Drives to recognize each other as same size drives in the Admin Console. They are the exact same but the software would not pick it up.

I spent all day yesterday installing and running and configuring SME Server; testing away I was.

- Test Server Specs
AMD 1.333333333 ghz
756 MGS RAM
2 x 30 GIG WD HDs
2 x 40 GIG WD HDs  (I tried 40 GIG drives too)

I plan to use a single HD to run SME Server and use a USB External HD as my backup drive and have it backup every night. That should work for my needs and alleviate the pain of RAID1. Plus, I gotta say, SME Server installs fast as all can be. I installed SME Server on my test server in 13 mins 29 secs. That was from boot up until I got the initial login screen for the Admin Console. Windows servers take HOURS to install and get into a working state; KUDOS SME Server.

[christian]

James,
What happens if you move the drive to the same cable as the first HDD?

[jsheline2003]

James,
What happens if you move the drive to the same cable as the first HDD?

I did that too and was able to build the array after a fresh install of SME Server. But after I broke the array to see if I could fix it to no avail.

The second and third time I tried to build a fresh array failed. When it came down to copying the system files over it failed at 94 % and 96 %.

[jameswilson]

configure the 2nd srive as the slave on the pri channel?
I could i suppose but id rather not as usually when a disk dies it brings the whole channel down with it so if both drives on the same channel id lose em both. I think i might look at trying it without the cdr connected and see if that makes a diff. Wish id bought 2 disks now and built on em both!! lol

[jsheline2003]

configure the 2nd srive as the slave on the pri channel?
I could i suppose but id rather not as usually when a disk dies it brings the whole channel down with it so if both drives on the same channel id lose em both. I think i might look at trying it without the cdr connected and see if that makes a diff. Wish id bought 2 disks now and built on em both!! lol

James, you are correct I didn't think of that, if one drive died it would drag down the entire channel.

When I was in the Army I served with a JamesWilson down in Panama.

[jameswilson]

not me mate im in the uk and the closest i camt to service was being in the atc (air training cor) was he a proper james wilson?

[jsheline2003]

not me mate im in the uk and the closest i camt to service was being in the atc (air training cor) was he a proper james wilson?

It's a small world sometimes, you just never know until ya ask.

Thanks again for the help. I am digging this forum. I have my own dedicated servers with 20 megabits per second allowed, I'm thinking of becoming a mirror.

[dsemuk]

I have my own dedicated servers with 20 megabits per second allowed, I'm thinking of becoming a mirror.

If you are able to help please email staff (at) contribs.org mirrors are very limited as you probably know.

Dave

[jameswilson]

I have tried that with no luck, should i try and do it manually with mdadm or will that totall screw things up

[jameswilson]

If i partitioned the blank drive to match the running drive would iot build then. I have always used webmin to modify parttition tables but i obviulsy dont have this. I have also chewcked the drives and it appaers the new drive has 900 more blocks, they are both western digital 82 Gig drives with the same model number, but obviously there is a slight difference.

[ldkeen]

If you're 100% sure the drives are identical, you could comment out lines 64 and 65 in the /sbin/e-smith/add_mirror script as shown below:

Code: [Select]

#[ $(cat $IDE/$NEW/capacity) = $(cat $IDE/$OLD/capacity) ] || \
#    usage "$OLD and $NEW are different size disks"
and try running the script again.
Lloyd

[jameswilson]

ldkeen
Awesome mate   thankyou that got it going
You also said 'if your sure they are exactly the same size'
as previoiusly posted they are not quite the new one was about 50K bigger than the existing. Im assuming if the drive is bigger its ok  but obviously if smaller bad things wil happen

[ldkeen]

ldkeen
Awesome mate   thankyou that got it going

Thanks, but the kudo's should really go to the guy that wrote the script. I might be wrong but I believe Gordon Rowell done the work.

Im assuming if the drive is bigger its ok  but obviously if smaller bad things wil happen

Not too sure about that, I'm pretty sure that you'll just lose 50k somewhere. I had to do this a couple of months ago and nothing bad has happened on my setup.
Lloyd

[christian]

Glad it is sorted. The reason I was asking about the same IDE cable is I noticed when I did this before, the kernel reports a different geometry for the same drive (on 1st vs 2nd cable). So I took the easy way out and put them on the same cable.

I take your point about a failure taking down the channel but  so far I have had two failures in a few years and each time it was an actual issue with the disk. To take down the channel I believe it would have to be due to an electronix issue on the board.

However, puting them on two separate cables is clearly better.