[gentoo-user] recovering RAID from an old server

[Iain Buchanan]

Hi all,

I'm trying to recover some data from and old Snap Server 4200 (c2003)
belonging to a local charity.  It has 4 80Gb IDE drives, and runs some
sort of Linux kernel with their (snap's) own applications on top.

It won't boot to the Snap OS (Guardian OS 3.1.079 - quite an old one,
major version 4 and 5 have succeeded it) but it does boot to a
"recovery" console with a simple web page showing some details.  From my
google searches the OS resides on the disks (perhaps just the first
one?) but I don't know where this recovery console is coming from.

I've managed to put Gentoo 2008.0_beta2 minimal (because I happened to
have the iso) on a USB key and made it bootable.  It boots and fdisk -l
shows me the four drives and some partitions.  (Ubuntu wouldn't even
boot ;)

I don't have the original CD's with the OS recovery on it, nor can I
download it (upgraded versions are $600+).  I can't even find any *ahem*
backup versions online in the usual channels.

OK so the question: How can I recover the RAID data?  It's RAID5
(probably) with 4 disks.  Can I just run some up-to-date raid tools and
mount the drives or do I have to get exactly the same kernal and setup?
I don't have much experience with RAID.  (It's software raid - no card
just 2 IDE channels with master and slave).

Once I've recovered the data I don't really care what goes on it - there
are some great free NAS OS's, but it's mounting the RAID partition that
I'm not sure about.

Can I randomly mount partitions read-only or will this screw things up
further?

thanks for any suggestions,
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

"Don't fear the pen. When in doubt, draw a pretty picture." 
   --Baker's Third Law of Design.