Re: ext3 filesystem not working with raid5
From: Walter Mautner (nextnews.15.eatallspam_at_spamgourmet.com)
Date: 12/29/03
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Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 22:45:17 +0100
Mario Thomas wrote:
> I have a computer with a RAID5 array running of an adaptec 2400A IDE
> raid controller. There are four disks each of 250Gb and made by
> Maxtor.
....
> Following a lot of diagnostic work and over a week of downtime of the
> array we have come to the conclusion that the ext3 filesystem is
> damaged somehow. When we run fsck -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 it runs but then
> exits with an error about a magic number. Also it suffers from lot's
> of I/O errors.
>
Hmm, that definately should not happen. It means you have troubles with your
hardware, and the array might already have reconstructed with bad data due
to that.
> My question is - how do we restore the ext3 filesystem. We've spoken
> to adaptec who have confirmed that the raid5 is healthy. So it has to
> be a filesystem problem. Just to be sure we've arranged an RMA of the
> card just to swap it out - but my fear is that the ext3 is to blame.
>
So the array by itself appears "healthy" (again) but it's comparable to the
habit of windozes scandisk that often used the wrong FAT to repair and
*then* damaged the data. Or even worse, since a hardware raid doesn't know
about the filesystems stored on it.
Before or when you exchange the card, make sure you have the correct cabling
(80pole, blue bay on mainboard, end bay on master ide, middle on slave) and
look for "DrivenotReady SeekComplete" or similar messages.
In addition, consider *maxtor*250GIG IDE disks to be nice for single-user
harddisk video recording, but not for (drive)head-shaking multiuser
applications.
> The disks contain a lot of sensitive business critical information for
> which there is no back up - just lots of work to manually re-create it
> - which would be a complete pain. I think i've learned my lesson about
> backing up - even when you have a RAID5!
>
Of course. A RAID is by no means a substitute for backups, it might help to
keep downtime low on single drive failures but not prevent against PEBKAC
errors of sort 'oh I should have been one directory down before hitting rm
-rf' or a rooted system or a RAID controller running amuck at startup.
Or any other unthink- or unbelievable accident.
> Now all I need are some pointers and instructions on how to ascertain
> exactly what the problem is with the ext3 filesystem and how to go
> about repairing it.
>
First, dd it to somewhere else (one additional disk of appropriate size or a
tape backup) before you experiment further. If the array is "healthy"
still.
Depending on the importance and worth of the data, you might even try
professional assistence or a data recovery lab.
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