Hardware raid in Core - How to make it available to the Core?

[kawal]

Hi  I am ne to Linuxmce and I tried searching this forum and googling but could not find the proper answer.
I  have setup a core system out of a IBM workstation. This computer was previiously used as a NAS and worked fine but I wanted to tap into its potetial and expand to linuxMCE. I have a hardware raid setup and a few scsi HDDs. The install goes smooth and I install the core on on eof the scsi 15K drives. I have 2 other scsi drives and a 1.7TB raid array.
How do I make the raid array seen to the core - I want my media to go to  that drive?  saw that I can make a Software raid array out off my 2 scsi drives and the hardware raid but that only complicates things more if there is a disc failure.

Can anyone help me with making my hardware raid avaialble to the system?

[Zaerc]

Hardware raid should just show up as a single big drive I reckon. 

And if it happens to be "fake-raid" really, you're better off using proper software raid.

[jondecker76]

I agree with Zaerc, it should appear as a single drive. If it is not a true hardware RAID, then you are best off using the software RAID on the drives. However, the software raid currently does not have reporting features, so if you go this option, make sure you try to check the status of the software raid in the web admin at least weekly. Also keep in mind that software RAID systems are technically easier to recover since nothing is proprietary and can be recovered from any Linux box.

[Zaerc]

Thanks for the reminder jondecker76, just noticed one of the drives in my raid5 array went AWOL and had to be re-added with mdadm -a /dev/md0 /dev/sda.

[jondecker76]

I don't think its mdadm its self that is causing drives to be kicked from time to time - I'm pretty sure its in one of the LMCE RAID scripts, I just haven't found what exactly is causing it yet.
Other mdadm installations rarely have this problem, even through repeated hard shutdowns. I may need to make a debug log and report to it line by line to find where it is happening. Also, simple RAID alerting via a message to orbiter is simple to implement - I think I'll do that soon as I have found a drive kicked on at least 5 occasions over the last year.

[kawal]

All Thanks for the replies

The raid is a hardware adaptec card that supports 6 sata drives and includes 64MB onboard RAM.
When I go into Kbuntu file explorere I only see the two scsi drives but no raid drive.  I can see all drives and I have been successful at creating a software Raid  out of all the drives.
Also it seams that the drive gets assigned to the proper device (dev/sdd1 in my case).
Maybe I need to format the drive to get it detected (I havent done that yet)?
There must be a better way of adding storeage?  Maybe I am not looking at this the right way - should the file explorer see the raid drive ? Will it be added to the media folder automatically ?

Thanks for the help.

[jondecker76]

whats the model number of the RAID card?

[kawal]

The card is a Adaptec CERC SATA1.5/6ch made for DELL.
Here is the manual :


http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cat=sup&cs=04&k=Adaptec+CERC+SATA1.5%2f6ch&rpp=12&p=1&subcat=ddc&rf=all&nk=f&sort=K&ira=False&~srd=False&ipsys=False&advsrch=False&~ck=anav


I used it before on a PCLINUX OS, Mandriva , Ubuntu and a Freenas system .


Like I said before - when I go into the Webadmin->advanced->Raid
I can see the Raid drive (/dev/sdd1) and I can add it to a raid partition but I just want to add it as a drive for the meidai folder (Public) so I can store my ripped DVDs on it.  So definately the adaptec controller is working fine but I just dont know how to add the drive tot he system.
I read today That i need to farmat it maually - if so I will give it a try toight.

[PeteK]

I have an AMCC H/W raid controller in my core.  In order for LMCE to find it, I had to create the array (which it sounds like you've already done) and then partition the array (using the normal linux paritioning tools). After that, LMCE found the drive and added it normally. I didn't read that you had created a partition.  Have you done so already?

[niz23]

Kawal.

You dont say how may drvies you have.  (make no difference though)
You say Linux see two scsi drives. Which mean, either you have created to logical hw raid-drives or you have no raid functionality activated.

What do you see if you do a "dmesg | grep adaptec"?

If you want to use hardware raid, which I suggest you should if you have a real raid card which you seem to have.


Have you configured your raid drives?
Look in you cards bios. You can probably configure it there.
Or Adaptec have some nice utility that you can use two configure your drives correctly.

/niz23

[jondecker76]

The RAID section of the web admin deals only with software raids.

If you have a hardware raid, it should have automatically been added as a single drive as a child of the core or media director it is installed in so long as it has been partitioned.

In the web admin, on the left pane at the bottom click on "Show Devices Tree", then drill down using the treeview through the device the raid was installed in and you should see the disk drive device as if it were a normal single disk drive. (named something like HDS728080PLAT20 (sda1)-Generic or sililar) Click on it to see the device template information to make sure its the correct drive. Also, i would suggest checking it to use LMCE's directory structure.

[kawal]

Thanks for all the info - I did not partition the drive as i thought that LinuxMce would take care of that from the web admin (Guess i got spoiled by Freenas)
Ok I will check the tree structure.
Just in case I will reinstall everthing again to make sure that playing around with the software raid option didnt mess things up. I will return after I get things going again.

[kawal]

Ok all is fine now
I partioned the drive with partedmagic and reinstalled Linuxmce - during the Video setup part the drive was found and I am now able to use it. Thanks for all your help.