[plug] Problem with software RAID

[Tim Bowden]

On Sat, 2004-03-06 at 22:05, Craig Ringer wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-03-06 at 21:46, Tim Bowden wrote:
> 
> > I am just helping out a friend with a broken ide software raid setup on
> > a RH 9 box.  I would like to backup the hdd's as they are before I go
> > playing with it. 
> 
> Sensible.
> 
> > I can't tar -czvf /dev/hdc1 ./backup.tgz which is what
> > I really want to do.  
> 
> ... because it just creates a tar file with a single device node in it,
> yes?
> 
> > I can of course dd if=/dev/hdc1 but how do I get
> > the output piped to a zip file?
> 
> Do you mean a zip file, or "a compressed image file"? I assume you mean
> that latter, and if so, just `dd if=/dev/hdc1 | gzip > image.gz` . If
> the former ...why?
> 

Exactly what I needed, at least I thought it was.  Given the size of the
partition (40GB), the backup file is way too big for the windows machine
it is being backed up onto (ie, greater than 2gb.  In the absence of a
sufficiently large hdd available at the moment, the only workaround I
can think of is to break the gzip output into <2gb chunks as it is
produced and save a number of files to the windows machine.  Any ideas
on how this might be done?  Perhaps the best way may be just to get a
spare large disk in the morning.

> What RAID format was in use - RAID0, RAID1, or RAID5? How is it broken? 
> 

Raid 1.  Initially problems with M/board H/ware.  Swapped in new
M/Board.  Two ide software RAID drives worked initially with both drives
on the one ide channel.  A new ide controller card was put in the PC and
the drives were put on it.  Problems started from this point.  On
bootup, errors were reported (superblock not raid0 or linear array or
some such thing.) I have tried mounting the drives individually, but no
luck.  Not exactly sure just what has been done to the disks so far, but
some fiddling has occured.  I don't want to start fiddling too much
myself till I have a backup.

Thanks,
Tim Bowden