<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Hi Tim</font><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Thanks for your post. I tried this several times now, but everytime I boot of the Live CD I get md125 again. I have't been able to boot of hard drive as I keep on getting a kernel panic on boot up. I suspect the panic is caused by the kernel also not being able to find the correct md devices. I tried running the commands </font></div><div><pre class="bz_comment_text" id="comment_text_1" style="white-space: pre-wrap; width: 50em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><b> mdadm -S /dev/md125
mdadm -A /dev/md1 --update=super-minor</b></font></pre><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">But they didn't fix the issue. Still on every reboot from LiveCD I get back to md125. After my initial installation after I created the file system on the raid array using :</font></div></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br></font></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>mkfs.ext4 /dev/md1</b></font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>mkswap /dev/md2</b></font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>swapon /dev/md2</b></font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>mkfs.ext4 /dev/md3</b></font></span></div></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3">and a reboot, fdisk now reports that the partition table for mdX is not valid. </font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk /dev/md127: 995.6 GB, 995640344576 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 243076256 cylinders, total 1944610048 sectors</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk identifier: 0x00000000</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b><br></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk /dev/md127 doesn't contain a valid partition table</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b><br></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk /dev/md126: 268 MB, 268369920 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 65520 cylinders, total 524160 sectors</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk identifier: 0x00000000</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b><br></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk /dev/md126 doesn't contain a valid partition table</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b><br></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk /dev/md125: 4294 MB, 4294901760 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 1048560 cylinders, total 8388480 sectors</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk identifier: 0x00000000</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b><br></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>Disk /dev/md125 doesn't contain a valid partition table</b></font></div></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">I wonder why it is not picking up the partition table I created. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">I am using Gentoo for this as I really like it. It makes things a little bit more complicated but generally they work, well at least until now they did. </font></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On 03/03/2012, at 18:08 , Tim White wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Basically, linux will "auto assemble" raid devices it finds, even if
they aren't for the current system. Annoyingly, it'll ignore the
names the raid array say they want (/dev/md1, /dev/md2 etc) and give
them numbers starting at 125. (Which can break a NAS if you plug in
the raid drives into a normal machine, and don't set the names to
the correct numbers before putting them back in the NAS).<br>
See <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638532#c1">https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638532#c1</a> for a
solution to getting it to name them correctly and hopefully on
reboot also named correctly.<br>
<br>
What I'd do, boot off a live distro, assemble them with the correct
numbers and update the preferred minor stuff (see above link), then
mount them all and chroot into the system. From there, make sure
that things like /etc/mdadm.conf are correct, and maybe even update
your initramfs if needed.<br>
<br>
I believe if you did a brand new OS install with an installer that
supported setting up RAID as part of the install process, it would
be simple. Which OS are you using? I understand that Debian should
be fairly easy to get running on RAID.<br>
<br>
Tim<br>
p.s. Stick with mdadm, it's much more portable when something
breaks. As for how it works, that depends on it's RAID level, and
yes, it's software RAID so no hardware accelerated RAID5 etc, I
personally don't use RAID5 preferring RAID 0, 1 and 10. Drives are
(were) cheap.<br>
<br>
On 03/03/12 13:26, Alexander Hartner wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4B45CE63-8432-43EE-A043-64B5683A00A3@j2anywhere.com" type="cite"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">I am
setting up a new system. After partitioning /dev/sda,
transferring my partition over to /dev/sdb using</font>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 7.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Menlo"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk
--force /dev/sdb</b></font></span></p>
<div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></span></div>
<div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">And setting up the
raid arrays using :</font></span></div>
<div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></span></div>
<div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal
normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing:
0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1
--assume-clean --level=1 -e 0.90 --raid-devices=2
/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1</b></font></span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal
normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing:
0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md2
--assume-clean --level=1 -e 0.90 --raid-devices=2
/dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2</b></font></span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal
normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing:
0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><b>mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md3
--assume-clean --level=1 -e 0.90 --raid-devices=2
/dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3</b></font></span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal
normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing:
0.0px"><b><br>
</b></span></div>
</span>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Everything
seems OK, however if I reboot all the drive names change
to :</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><b>
<div>cat /proc/mdstat </div>
<div>Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5]
[raid4] [raid10] </div>
<div>md125 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb1[1]
sda1[0]</div>
<div> 262080 blocks [2/2] [UU]</div>
<div> </div>
<div>md126 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb2[1]
sda2[0]</div>
<div> 4194240 blocks [2/2] [UU]</div>
<div> </div>
<div>md127 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb3[1]
sda3[0]</div>
<div> 972305024 blocks [2/2] [UU]</div>
<div> </div>
<div>unused devices: <none></div>
</b></font></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">
<div style="font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0px;
margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;
font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Menlo; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b><br>
</b></span></div>
</span></div>
<div>
<div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">While this
in itself may not be a problem, after I install my OS
(Linux of course) I get a kernel panic. I suspect the
kernel panic is due to the kernel not finding the
partition I specified in grub.conf and fstab (i.e. :
/dev/md1|2|3). </font></div>
</div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">I have been
struggling with mdadm raid for several days now, with
little progress to show. dmraid seems to leverage what
little support is provided by my onboard RAID controller,
which seems like a good think. mdadm seems to just keep
both drives in sync with each other without leveraging
hardware. I might well be wrong there. So far I only tried
mdadm.</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Alex</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>On 03/03/2012, at 09:33 , Marcos Raul Carot Collins
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>Are you installing the OS or are you trying to
implement to an extra hard disk <br>
after installing?<br>
<br>
I only set it up in Debian at install time (mdadm) and
although you need some <br>
partitioning background, it is prety easy. Let me know if
that's your case and <br>
I can guide you.<br>
<br>
I haven't tried in other OSes...<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Marcos<br>
<br>
On Sábado 03 Marzo 2012 05:17:12 Tim White escribió:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On 03/03/12 04:36, Alexander
Hartner wrote:<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">Has anybody got any experience
with either / both ? Which one do you<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">suggest ? I have been trying to
configure mdadm for the past week<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">without success. Should I
persist or try dmraid ? Is mdadm really so<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">much better then dmraid ?<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">I've never used dmraid (and a
quick read suggests it's for "software<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">raid" provided by certain bios).<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">What are you trying to achieve? I
have successfully used mdadm many<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">times in the past, both with
setting up raid and with repairing NAS's.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">Tim<br>
</blockquote>
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