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Re: What makes /dev/hdb1 say it's mounted/active when it isn't?



On 2 Mar 2004 at 17:47, CW Harris wrote:

> Shouldn't matter, as long as your BIOS can boot it (which it obviously
> can).
It can, but is there any possibility that's it's requiring the 
controller or HD to be "active" as far as the kernel is concerned?  I 
can't see how that's the case but my grasp of the mbr and partitions 
has always been shakey.

> >   mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-disks=2 missing /dev/hdc1
>                                    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
> Okay, I haven't used the mdadm (I used raidtools2), but shouldn't this
> be hdb1 missing?
I don't think so, it's straight out of that howto (I pretty sure).  I 
think it is reserving a first disc, unspecified, as failed, in a two 
disc array in which the second disc is active and is /dev/hdc1

I've tried using /etc/raidtab setting up essentially the raid1 config 
that's supplied but tweaking to /dev/hdb1 and /dev/hdc1 and ending 
with a failed-disk line:


# Sample raid-1 configuration
raiddev                 /dev/md0
raid-level              1
nr-raid-disks           2
nr-spare-disks          0
chunk-size              4

device                  /dev/hdc1
raid-disk               0

device                  /dev/hdb1
raid-disk               1
failed-disk             1

and that has the same result (I think the /etc/raidtab is spurious 
since, as I understand it, this is actually stored in the persistent 
superblock??)
 
> > which worked fine, mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdc1, mount it to /mnt1, 
> 
> and then shouldn't you have a working /dev/md0 to mkfs -t ext3
> /dev/md0?

Sorry, me being stupid in what I wrote, indeed so.   I was getting a 
working degraded array with one working drive and it was that I 
formatted. Sorry.

> If above was incorrect, then hdb1 would be part of the (active) RAID?
> so you can't import it again.
cat /proc/mdstat doesn't show it as active:

cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
read_ahead 1024 sectors
md0 : active raid1 hdc1[1]
      78124928 blocks [2/1] [_U]

unused devices: <none>

I read that as sayng that it's a degraded array currently with just 
the one drive in it, /dev/hdc1, and with space for a second.

> I haven't done that much RAID, and not with mdadm.  But if my comments
> above are correct, maybe this is your problem?
Much thanks, and I'm happy to be corrected, but I think they're not 
the problem though one of them was a typo of mine in the Email, 
fdsk'ing the raw drive not the array, that several people have noted.

_ANY_ suggestions welcome: it feels so lame to just use that second 
drive to mirror the first with a regular cp -aux / /mnt2 or something 
like that, though I'm starting to think that's the time efficient 
option given how much time setting up this server has cost me!

Cheers all,

C
PSYCTC: Psychotherapy, Psychology, Psychiatry, Counselling
   and Therapeutic Communities; practice, research, 
   teaching and consultancy.
Chris Evans & Jo-anne Carlyle
http://psyctc.org/ Email: chris@psyctc.org



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