Topic: First Time Setup - Seems Does Not Recognize Hardware RAID

[kjv1611]

First, My hardware specs:

Old VIA-based (if I remember correctly) motherboard with AMD K6-2 500MHz CPU, onboard sound, video.
Old 5400RPM IDE hard drive for the system.
PCI Add-in PNY S-CURE SATA RAID card - hard drives in a RAID 3 config (right now, one RAID 3, and one RAID 0 (really just a single drive, but it labels it that way in the card BIOS) - will be a 5 drive RAID 3 in a few days.
Basic CD drive for installing, and in case I need to later do anything with it.
PCI LAN card (d-link)
PCI USB 2.0 card

Mobo only has 3 PCI slots - no AGP - it does have an old modem slot, but I'll not be using any dialup connections for anything.

So far...

The server installed correctly, it seems, I'm able to configure things, create users, etc. I'm able to fully control it remotely - which is REALLY nice.

Here is my issue - or else I've just not figured it out yet:

It does not seem to see my RAID configured hard drives.

I tried looking under "information bays", and also under "manage redundancy", but nothing shows.

Can anyone get me pointed in the right direction on correcting this, or is some piece of my hardware limiting my options, here.

Thanks for any advice/info.

[jfarschman]

KJV,

  I'm no expert, but it could be that you don't have the drivers for you PNY SATA card.  If that is the problem you can go find the drivers and load them when you are building... or you can take this advice from the wiki:

http://wiki.contribs.org/Raid#Raid_Notes

which says, "Many on board hardware raid cards are in fact software RAID. Turn it off as cheap "fakeraid" cards aren't good."

Still wand the drivers... I think the other link you'll find may help.

[kjv1611]

jfarschman,

Thanks for the advice.  I guess that if it is anything, it would be the drivers for the hardware.  Being that it is a total hardware sollution - all done in BIOS, and not an "on board" RAID sollution, then that option is not the deal, for sure.  So, I suppose it's the drivers.

Is there a way to "install" drivers with this SME Server, or else how do you get it to recognize the correct drivers?

In the mean time, I'll take a look at the link you mentioned to see if any helpful info can be found there.

[kjv1611]

Another note about the PNY S-CURE RAID card.  This card is setup to show the SATA drive as a IDE drive to the BIOS so that there are fewer compatibility problems.  I used this same card, prior in Windows XP, and it recognized the RAID 3 array as one large disk.

Any other suggestions?  I don't think it required a driver in Windows XP, but I cannot remember for sure.

[TrevorB]

It does not seem to see my RAID configured hard drives.

I tried looking under "information bays", and also under "manage redundancy", but nothing shows.

By default smeserver will use ALL of your drives (and software raid them...)

On the admin console (ie. the console on your server), look in the 'Manage disk drives' item and it should show you what it has done with the disks. It is likely that it has created mirrored software raids using both drives as /dev/md0 & /dev/md1

Good Luck
Trevor B

[kjv1611]

Okay, maybe we're getting somewhere, then.

I went to option 5. Manage disk redundancy - there was no option for "Manage disk drives" - but I imagine it's the same thing.

This is what I see after making that selection - and it may just be that I do not understand it totally.

Code: [Select]

md2: active raid1 hda2[0]
        14908224 blocks [2/1] [U_]
md1: active raid1 hda1[0]
        104320 blocks [2/1] [U_]
unused devices <none>

Your system only has a single disk drive installed or is using hardware
mirroring.  iIf you would like to enable software mirroring, please shut
down, install a second disk drive (of the same capacity) and then return
to this screen.
Can anyone decipher that for me?  I've no idea what it means by blocks - I'm assuming Kilobytes or Bytes, maybe?

What I have physicall installed is this;
1 IDE 15 GB hard drive
3 SATA 500GB hard drives in a RAID 3 configuration equalling to 1 Terabytes of storage space (shows something like 989... or similar) - I have one more 500GB hard drive attached, but not configured - I'll be attaching a 5th drive, and that will end up being a 5 drive RAID 3 ARRAY.  These hard drives are connected via the PNY S-CURE PCI SATA RAID card.  It has it's own processor, memory, etc.

The RAID Card's processor is a Netcell Revolution processor, and the PCI card has 64MB on-board RAM - that's on-board to the controller, not the motherboard.

[kjv1611]

Okay, I have found what "blocks" are:

But what are blocks and i-nodes? 1 block in linux is 1kb. So if you want to limit the quota to 1 Mb you
will just use 1024 blocks.

http://www.netikus.net/documents/Linux-Mailserver-Installation.pdf

[kjv1611]

So, this message is saying that it sees 2 partitions of one hard drive, perhaps?

md2: active raid1 hda2[0]
        14908224 blocks [2/1] [U_] 14.22GB
md1: active raid1 hda1[0]
        104320 blocks [2/1] [U_] 101.9MB
unused devices <none>

So, I'm guessing the smaller one is set to be the partition where the server software lies, and the larger one to be a data partition?  At least the way SME Server sees it?

And what about the rest of that data on the screen?  What does it mean?

I'll try to do some more digging in the mean time.

But with the way things are looking with this distro, I'm starting to think I should just consider trying FreeNAS or maybe Ubuntu 7 or MintOS.  Does anyone have any suggestions along these lines?

My desire is primarily to have basically my own NAS sollution at home.  I would like to MAYBE tie in a print server, and/or possibly FTP and WEB server functions as well, but the last three aren't really as important.

I want to have the server running, and just put it basically back in a closet, connected via ethernet - which seems to be fine for SME server, if I can just get it to see my storage drives! 

I also want to be able to setup some sort of automatic backup routine to a USB hard drive - possibly one that will only run when the hard drive is actually attached, rather than at a set time - don't know whether that's possible with any distro or not.

Any suggestions along the lines of sticking with SME Server or  trying something else are also more than welcome! 

[kjv1611]

And just in case the server is somehow not wanting to deal with the PCI added storage instead of the IDE attached storage, if I were to just unplug the IDE drive, and install the SERVER onto the RAID 3 ARRAY, or either just copy it over using a disk imaging app, that then it would recognize my storage array correctly?

I was under the impression from all I've read that it's best to just use one hard drive (or a RAID 1 array of 2 hard drives for the file system, and then use a larger RAID ARRAY for storage.

Is this not the case?  Does it make good sense to load the server software on the one large RAID ARRAY?

[jfarschman]

KJV,

  Here is the fun part.  SME is brilliant and it anticipates what you are really trying to do.   If you have a RAID array on SATA and another IDE drive in your machine.... assuming everything is detected, the SME will try to mirror the SATA and IDE.  Not IDE-al.

  Unplug the extra drive and then add it later.

Reference these two links... the manual on RAID and how to add a second drive.
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter5#RAID1_Support_.28Disk_Mirroring.29
http://wiki.contribs.org/AddExtraHardDisk

  Oh, and while reading these, think about how much you can learn in the warm SME environment which is well document and full of people who can help you with issues.

[CharlieBrady]

These hard drives are connected via the PNY S-CURE PCI SATA RAID card.

Not supported by RedHat EL4 (or CentOS4) and therefore not supported by SME server.

[kjv1611]

Not supported by RedHat EL4 (or CentOS4) and therefore not supported by SME server.

So, if the PCI card is not supported, then I'm just up the creek with this one, basically?  Or is there a way that I can take say the Windows driver(s) or whatever, and "fix" it to where it's supportable on SME?  I really like the simplicity of the design, and would love to somehow make it work.

Of course, if not, then I guess I can try another distro.

Any thoughts on "making it work"?

jfarschman,

Thanks for the wiki links.  I'll take a look there as well.

[jfarschman]

You are out of luck.  I'd look for a real card, or just use the built-in SATA connections on your motherboard.

If you need a card, these guys are generally supported and have cards ranging from $100-Many Hundreds:
http://www.3ware.com/

[kjv1611]

Well, as much as I'd like to stick with SME Server from what I've seen myself, and read so far, I don't have onboard SATA connections on the mobo I'm using - it's really old - AMD Athlon K6-2 500MHz CPU.  And I don't see spending even $100 on another card being worth-while to me right now.  I'll just have to find another software alternative.

Of course, if this were primarily for business purposes, I'd just buy all new hardware, and build it "right", including probably a RAID card by 3ware or another high-end RAID card manufacturer.  I've seen some that made me drool, but even $100 is out of the budget I want to put into this project for now.

Of course, with other things sort of on the burner, I may one day get to go with the newer hardware route as well.     Of course, by then, the PNY card might actually be supported!  I doubt it though, as it's a discontinued product anyway.  The CPU manufacturer for the card went under: it uses a NetCell Revolution CPU.

[kjv1611]

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to another Linux distro that might actually support the PCI card I'm using, or either a way I can search for that?  If I get the time, I'll do some more Googling to see what I can find that way.