Raid array built on install, ripping mysteries?

[jnappi]

Is this suppose to happen? On a clean install I use my SATA 40gb drive as the main install drive. I have three seperate SATA 320Gb drives that I plan on using as my raid0 array. Everything goes great on the install. I then proceed to build my raid0 array per the directions in the user guide, but I find out that it is already there as Software Raid 0 /dev/md0. Hmm, ok I'll go with that! Everything looks good, have about 900Gb of disk space on the /dev/md0 array, not sure how this is mounted but I say what the heck lets see if I can rip a dvd movie to it. Start the ripping process, asks me if I would like to install it on my 40Gb drive or my md0 array, chose the md0 array and create a directory called movies to install it too. Process starts but I noticed that my 40Gb disk space is being used, also notice the if I do df -k I now see some kind of mount point created called /mnt/device/36... Is this mount point of the inserted dvd disk? Anyway, ripping process continues, once it is completed the mount point disappears and whalaw, nothing, no file under the movies directory. Strange thing is I saw the movie file being created and ripped, not the right disk but being created. Ok, now I am confused. Lets first see if I can get my md0 array a mount point. I setup my fstab so that it now mounts my md0 array on a directory called, mcestorage. Reboot, check the mount points and everything looks cool. Start the rip process again and this time it looks like it is now coping to my arrayper what I told it to do, good deal. I do a df -k and now see my mount point for my array and the same mount point of /mnt/devices/36..., both reveal identical disk sizes and both are incrementally counting down as the file is created, hmm strange. Again, ripping process completes and again no file! I actually went into the directory that I specified on my array to copy to0 and saw the ripped movie file being built! I don't get it, what am I doing wrong.

I have also tried deleting my array in the web admin page and create new one with no luck. I can delete the array but when I try to create a new one I never see my 320Gb drives listed to add them. Also, on a reboot the raid0 array get magically recreated.


Phhhh! Cornfused!

[wsuetholz]

The key here is that LinuxMCE auto mounts devices it adds, and then unmounts those devices when not needed..  The movie is in your database (or was before you started deleting things), and when you try to play that movie it will automatically mount the /mnt/device/36 and play the movie. 

Personally, I did things a bit differently, since I didn't like what LinuxMCE does for internal HD's.  I configured the LVM system as part of installing Kubuntu, and then after everything was installed, I plugged in my additional drives, and told LinuxMCE to always ignore them, and added them to my LVM system.  I have a volume for /home/public (where most of the public movies and audio go) and a volume for /usr/pluto (where it puts the diskless client root drives).  This way I can easily expand when necessary.  This did require some researching of LVM configuration options, and installing Kubuntu using the alternate install CD, but so far, I'm happier about the way my disks are used.  Also when I fill up these HD's I can put in a larger one and move things to the new drive.  At this point I'm not using RAID, but the instructions I found for LVM detail how to do it with RAID as well.

The device way make a lot of sense for remote/transient storage, but doesn't really make sense for internal storage.  In my view anyway.

Bill