Here i go again, Linux what flavour?

[LeperousDust]

Stan my one big piece of advice would be don't do this Far far far too much faffing about, i'm sure you'd rather do anything than this

So i've whittled the hardware problem i think down to a dodgy PATA to SATA connector. Thats unplugged at the minute. I've also stopped using the promise controller for the time being (only because i was trying to rule that out but ive not reactivated it yet).

Anyway now my rocketraid card detects the drives (3 of them) ubuntu boots super quick, and everything seems dandy. fdisk suggests otherwise. None of the 3 (formmated and raid tagged) drives appear. WTF? Theyre in the Hardware Information GUI window, all rosey. The terminal kinda freezes (well it doesn't but i can't actually give it any more inputs but i can type in it, whats this called?) If i shut it down and load up another terminal session same thing happens. Keeps freezing where it would show the 3 drives?

Help my please because this is slowly driving me into the ground. I want to offload all my stuff on the lappy (RELIABLY!) to this computer so i can format this laptop to multi boot Ubuntu/Vista/XP. But the only thing that has enough space would be the RAID config i'd have set up... Unless i just use one of the single drives which would make data juggling fun later on too (i'd rather not.).

Cheers

[Mark]

If you can't get a stable non-RAID config then throwing a RAID on top would be the absolute last thing I would even consider trying. You're asking to be on the wrong end of a lot of lost data there.

I've never used fdisk to detect drives - didn't even know it could (or maybe it can't). Looking through dmesg is a much better way to find out what drives you have, or just

ls -l /dev/sd? /dev/hd?

Will work most of the time (sd for SCSI and SATA, hd for IDE).

[LeperousDust]

Yeah i understand making a RAID upon dodgy drives is asking for loads of trouble, thus why i'm now back basics. I'll get another dmesg posted up in a second then, i have no idea how to read what dmesg is telling me...

[LeperousDust]

FInally got a new dmesg uploaded, can you shed any light on that for moi? Cheers

[Mark]

Well, you have a USB device that seems to not be very happy:

[ 40.815507] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 2, error -71

Run 'lsusb' to try and figure out what that device is.

As for the disks, you have:

CD/DVD:
[ 41.602255] scsi 0:0:0:0: CD-ROM TSSTcorp DVD-ROM TS-H352C DE02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 42.095966] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 4x/48x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[ 42.104721] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[ 42.104798] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0

Disk 1:
[ 41.765504] ata3.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG SP0411C, UU100-05, max UDMA7
[ 41.765508] ata3.00: 78242976 sectors, multi 16: LBA48
[ 41.773474] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
[ 41.945232] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA SAMSUNG SP0411C UU10 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 42.083188] Probing IDE interface ide2...
[ 42.095746] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 78242976 512-byte hardware sectors (40060 MB)
[ 42.095769] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 42.095773] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 42.095804] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 42.095898] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 78242976 512-byte hardware sectors (40060 MB)
[ 42.095917] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 42.095922] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 42.095958] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 42.095966] sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 >
[ 42.123247] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk

Disk 2:
[ 41.937113] ata4.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG SP0411C, UU100-05, max UDMA7
[ 41.937118] ata4.00: 78242976 sectors, multi 16: LBA48
[ 41.945080] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
[ 41.945419] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA SAMSUNG SP0411C UU10 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 42.123358] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 78242976 512-byte hardware sectors (40060 MB)
[ 42.123378] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 42.123382] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 42.123413] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 42.123499] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 78242976 512-byte hardware sectors (40060 MB)
[ 42.123517] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 42.123521] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 42.123552] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 42.123559] sdb: sdb1
[ 42.128342] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

Disk 3:
[ 42.647089] Probing IDE interface ide3...
[ 42.934625] hdg: ST3400832A, ATA DISK drive
[ 43.604782] hdg: selected mode 0x45
[ 43.604910] ide3 at 0xdf68-0xdf6f,0xdf82 on irq 19
[ 52.002104] hdg: max request size: 512KiB
[ 52.003482] hdg: 781422768 sectors (400088 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=48641/255/63, UDMA(100)
[ 52.003595] hdg: cache flushes supported
[ 52.003659] hdg: hdg1

Disk 4:
[ 43.604971] Probing IDE interface ide0...
[ 43.892315] hda: ST3400832A, ATA DISK drive
[ 44.562469] hda: selected mode 0x45
[ 44.562567] ide0 at 0xdfe0-0xdfe7,0xdf9e on irq 19
[ 52.031566] hda: max request size: 512KiB
[ 52.031885] hda: 781422768 sectors (400088 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=48641/255/63, UDMA(100)
[ 52.031993] hda: cache flushes supported
[ 52.032038] hda: hda1

Disk 5:
[ 44.562630] Probing IDE interface ide1...
[ 44.850033] hdc: ST3400832A, ATA DISK drive
[ 45.520157] hdc: selected mode 0x45
[ 45.520275] ide1 at 0xdf90-0xdf97,0xdf9a on irq 19
[ 52.062488] hdc: max request size: 512KiB
[ 52.062784] hdc: 781422768 sectors (400088 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=48641/255/63, UDMA(100)
[ 52.062883] hdc: cache flushes supported
[ 52.062927] hdc: hdc1

RAID:
[ 52.456820] md: bind<hdc1>
[ 52.457016] md: bind<hdg1>
[ 52.457205] md: bind<hda1>

So, disks at sd0 (boot disk?), sd1, hdg, hda, hdc. Disk sda has a primary partition and an extended partition table containing one partition. Not sure what Ubuntu has done about configuring some swap space for you. I suspect nothing, which is rather naughty. All the other disks have one primary partition each.

I can't explain the logic concerning the choice of hdg, hda, hdc. I assume these are the ones that move around. They're all on the Highpoint controller, and I know very little about those.

Fortunately, provided all the disks are detected each time (which I understand you were having trouble with but not sure if you solved), then there's a nice way to avoid all this hd gumph and just use the disks by name. Handy...

http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2007/1...ames-in-linux/

Note that mdraid is still doing stuff even though you wiped it's config. I guess it found the RAID config on the drives instead (which is usually a good thing). This might be why fdisk is choking.

[LeperousDust]

Wooooo, Mark i love you, ok thats kinda making sense then.

On the USB front, theres an old bluetooth dongle still plugged in there that i wasn't really too worried about, but ubuntu had a bluetooth icon so i assumed that would be working (that could make it easy transfering from my laptop with bluetooth sometimes with hammering the wifi network). Printer is USB thats working cause i just printed something off. Only other thing is a logitech MX 700 desktop set i just replaced the wired stuff with? One connector is PS/2 and the other is USB but plugged in with the PS/2 to USB adapter, so i doubt Ubuntu would even see that as USB. AFAIK everything USB works too, so i'm not really sure if thats an issue

sda is the boot HDD, bdb is what i'm auto mounting for my backup script to write to.
The hdx's are 3 hard drives plugged into the rocketraid card. They all seem to be ok, the other one is playing about it's not on there because its unplugged but now i can see what im reading i'll have a look at that tomorrow if i get the chance I was using the onboard promise controller and thought that was the problem, but i turns out i'm pretty sure its the one cheap SATA to PATA converter i bought thats ballsing up, all so i didn't have to get messy with PATA and i couldn't find my fourth highpoint SATA adapter that came with the rocketraid card...

If i set up RAID5 on the 3 drives, what are my chances of expanding the RAID to encompass 4 drives when i come back over new year? I've read its very much possible, but the recommend backing up. Its not really practical to back up over 400gb of data when i don't have that space anywhere else...

//Edit:
I've already used PUID or whatever in the fstab to make sure that i mounted the right hard drive on startup so it backs up correctly, as the naming was screwing up on that too. Linux (well ubuntu at least) has not had much fun with multiple hard drives for me... Even install was a major hassle from the liveCD until i unplugged the other drives!
Cheers again mark your a star

[Mark]

Yes, you should be able to expand the RAID array. However, you also have to think about the partition you create on the RAID. For that, have a read around about LVM. The general principle is RAID -> LVM -> Real partition. Unfortunately my knowledge of LVM extends about as far as what I've written so I don't know how to actually do the expansion.

Anything involving messing with partitions should always be proceeded by a full backup. One powercut or system crash in the middle and you wave bye bye to the lot.

[LeperousDust]

I thought i had to use LVM, but upon further investigation i didn't think i did. Because md0 used the extra drive and then i expanded the partition with a partition editor with the extra free space or thats how i read it. LVM is more for joining lots of bits a things together nice and easy. Well thats what i got from reading around... Unsure. Anyway i'm actually seriously thinking dumping the system, clearing the hardware out and plugging its all back in again (drives) to make sure there are not dodgy connectiong which i thought there were, then starting again totally, becuase tbh over the last few weeks i've pretty much done feck all apart from set a printer up, and things seems to be getting confsued now. Ive also just found "how to build your own server" on bit-tech.net which was an interesting read, and funny enough i already feel like i know 90% of that article!
Stan should check these out if he wants to go ahead with it:
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/06...r_own_server/1
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/07...etter_server/1
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/11...ough_scripts/1

Originally Posted by Mark

Anything involving messing with partitions should always be proceeded by a full backup. One powercut or system crash in the middle and you wave bye bye to the lot.

I do understand the need for this, but that would mean i'd need twice the space i already have, if i don't have that what do i do? Backing up to DVD is highly impractical

[Stan_Lite]

Thanks for that Alex. Those guides look like just the sort of thing I'll need and relatively easy to follow too

I'll need to look at RAID as well as I intend to build the file server with oodles of storage so I don't have to try adding more at a later date.