Topic: Mounting SME6.5 hardware RAID1 disk on SME7.3 fails

[tlicht]

Hi wizards,
In order to have a real safe file server I installed an SME server 6.5 to a friend on an ASUS A7V133 board a couple of years ago. To maximize safety two  IDE disk were configured by the 'hardware' RAID manager (PROMISE 20265) on the mobo. Everything went smooth and the server worked flawlessly until a couple of weeks ago. It literally died. Now I cannot get past an initial loooong beep after which it shuts down - before even the POST screen. Believing that the mirrored IDE drives were two complete SME6.5 servers, I have now spent much time trying to mount one as a USB drive on my own SME7.3 server, but I have so far failed. My server aknowledges that an IDE drive is connected to a usb port and even calls it sdc but I cannot mount it.

To test the mounting procedure I connected another usb disk, formatted it and managed to mount it without problems....
Any suggestions how I could salvage the ibay files from the old raid disks?

[Reinhold]

...two  IDE disk were configured by the 'hardware' RAID manager (PROMISE 20265) on the mobo.

The above already describes your problem and it's solution
(and why you shouldn't use fakeraid (or not own just a single hardraid controller, never if bonded on mobo))

SME doesn't know about your raid1
... your Raid1 is not a SME Raid1
... it always was a Promise Raid

Get (= go buy) a new Promise controller into a PCI slot on a new mainboard
- preferably a system where SME (or any linux) is already working.

... install the old HD on the promise controller (better not boot from that HD)
... boot linux ...login as root
... note the device it shows up in the new system (fdisk -l) (should show some /dev/xyz )
... then mount the old disk somewhere  (under /mnt/promise ?)
...copy old ibay data to the new ibay location (using mc or the like)

Regards
Reinhold

[tlicht]

I managed to find a Promise raid card in one of my surplus boxes and configured a new pc with an old mobo and installed SME 7.3 on a single disk. The raid card and disks and partitions were found by the OS, but when trying to mount them I got the infamous

Already Mounted Or Busy

message....
The only way I managed to mount the raid was by removing dmraid via the remove programs in the web interface from another computer. As a consequence I could mount the drives and also a USB drive to copy the ibays to. Unfortunately something else happended when removing dmraid so network connections stopped working....
Still, the data is salvaged and I will now set up a new SME 7.3 server with sme-raided disks and hope to be able to copy the ibays from the USB disk.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[Reinhold]

...data is salvaged and I will now set up a new SME 7.3 server with sme-raided disks and hope to be able to copy the ibays from the USB disk.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

You are welcome.

I don't think you will have any problems to copy the ibay data now.
BTW: Almost all "fakeraid" controllers can be used as simple ide controllers ... with good/better success.  dmraid is a "pita" ... do not bother 
SME softraid it's (quite) a bit dated (kernel & mdadm) - but it sure is safe & proven - even fast (er) than most hardware advocates try to make you believe 


edit: for next time...
telinit 1
umount /proc
might help (else you need to tell more)

[tlicht]

Hi Reinhold,

... the next time is here 

I actually thought I'd try to mount the old Promise-raided disks - naturally with the controller in place - on the new SME 7.3 - mostly for just learning how to do it.

I am afraid that I didn't get much further with telinit1 and umount /proc...
just gor the reponse:

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proc: device is busy
proc: device is busyyes, twice...

Putting

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/dev/hde3 /media/smraid ext3 auto,nouser,noexec,ro 0 0into fstab didnt do the trick either...

I also tried the dmraid advice I saw in another posting:

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dmraid -an
dmraid -E -r /dev/hde3also without effect on trying to mount the 'fakeraid' disks...

Is there a non-destructive way to achieve this? (Removing dmraid screwed up the server, but allowed me to mount the fakeraid...)

Regards
Thomas

[Reinhold]

Hi Thomas,

(dark messages from the past <eg>)
I do believe that /dev/hde3 - which you try to mount -
will always be busy i.e. "hardware under the rule of dmraid"
However I am afraid "it's been long enough" that I do not remember what blockdevices were involved...
(you know we humans tend to suppress bad memories - don't we )

Best advice I can make today is to start with a (block list & raid list):
dmraid -b
and
dmraid -r
...to get the data needed.

I do believe that dmraid did/does activate all raid sets it finds by default but check:
dmraid -l        
...will list you the "pdc" or "Promise FastTrack" devices found
dmraid -ay -f pdc
...should activate Promise software RAID sets with Promise format

This (and a lot more) can be found here
Heinz Mauelshagen <Mauelshagen@RedHat.com> is still with RH in BRD afaik 

Sorry to be of no further help here - but I won't reach into the/my/our junkbox for a fakeraid .
...not even for you

Regards
Reinhold

...and get rid of that stuff - b_e_f_o_r_e  it fails 

[tlicht]

Wow Reinhold,

The Promise raid is mounted!
After the dmraid -an and dmraid -E -r /dev/hde3 nothing showed up in dmraid -r, but I still couldn't mount the Promise-raid.

So when I got your reply, I thought that I'd better restart the server so everything would be 'back to normal'.
Then I tried the dmraid -b which listed all four raid drives, both sme-raid and promise-raid as before. dmraid -r didn't show anything, so out of mere curiousity I checked in the /media/smraid library and lo and behold!  the damned drive had been mounted, obviously at the reboot!

Again thanks for your patience and for guiding me.
Take care
Thomas

...and I will probably keep the fakeraid board - you never know when it might come handy - but naturally I'll remove it and the old disks from the new server!