Re: [gentoo-user] Re: recovering RAID from an old server

[Iain Buchanan]

On Sat, 2010-02-20 at 10:46 +0100, Francesco Talamona wrote:
> > Should I be able to mount them automatically and let the SW RAID
> >  module sort it out or do I have to know how they're tied together
> >  beforehand?
>
> > md: looking for a shared spare drive
> > md100: no spare disk to reconstruct array! -- continuing in degraded
> > mode
> > md: recovery thread finished ...
> > md: hde5 [events: 000003a5]<6>(write) hde5's sb offset: 273024
> > md: hdg5 [events: 000003a5]<6>(write) hdg5's sb offset: 273024
> > XFS mounting filesystem md(9,100)
> > Ending clean XFS mount for filesystem: md(9,100)
> >
> > The partitions look like:
> > 9   100     546112 md100
> >    9   101     273024 md101
>
> It seems it has correctly mounted its partition... Can't you find it?

This is with the server recovery console, which is basically just a web
page.  No shell access.  There's not much I can do to get at md100 and
md101 (is this what software RAID devices usually appear as?)

> I have the feeling that you are messing it up. If I understand it
> correctly the server has an hardware RAID controller, that has to be
> managed via its drivers.

I think it's software RAID.  There is no RAID controller AFAICT.  All 4
drives are visible to the BIOS as Primary and Secondary Master and
Slaves.

> Another thing can come very useful: we once had a similar problem, we
> ended up borrowing one identical disc from another running server to put
> the array back online, we recovered our data, then restored the other
> server's array.

That's a possibility given what I can find on Google, however these are
few and far between, so I'd have to find someone willing to send their
drive to me (or vice versa) or send me the OS, which overlandstorage
doesn't like!

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

Come quickly, I am tasting stars!
		-- Dom Perignon, upon discovering champagne.