Re: SuSE: migrating tot linux software RAID?

From: Stephen Loeckle (stephen_at_lucidnetworks.net)
Date: 07/25/04 

Date: 24 Jul 2004 20:51:29 -0700

TJ <tj@getlostspammers.com> wrote in message news:<Jd_Hc.37110$Fy.5904@twister.socal.rr.com>...
> Your experience is due to your lack of experience. Here are the reasons you
> had issues (listed in no particular order):

Not likely. Been working with linux for 6 years now.

>
> The reason that you couldn't boot after your kernel upgrade is because when
> a filesystem is expected to be mounted, and is no longer there to mount,
> your kernel panics. It is certainly possible to rollback a "kernel update"
> without losing your data.

Yes, but the system does not act the same. I went through this on my
third machine with a megaraid that crashed because of this kernel
update.

>
> The reason that the update to your kernel failed is probably because you
> used a precompiled kernel or binaries for your raid configuration
> originally. Guess what - the kernel updates from SuSE's auto-updater are
> compiled for you, and not necessarily backwards compatible (either by
> design or by mistake is not relevant). How to work around that is another
> subject for the forum.

Not backwards compatible by design with two of the most popular
controllers on the market? LSI MegaRaid and Promise ULTRA/133? That is
terribly short sighted. By mistake is certainly relevant.

>
> The reason that you had data loss at all... well that was just bad planning
> on your part - raid is wonderful for keeping a system running when a drive
> has failed, but is *not* really a data backup system. Backing up your data
> should always go to an external resource (this can include an internal
> drive that is not part of your raid cluster).

I had backups and successfully restored the system after a full
install. Assuming that I didn't is awfully presumptuous don't you
think? A full reinstall and restore is terribly time consuming and
something that shouldn't have been necessary if the bugs hadn't goofed
things up. I was using JFS and the recovery programs only want to
support Reiser. My fault there for assuming.

>
> I don't mean to give you a hard time about it - just to give you some ideas
> how to use the tools better in the future. There are several of us, like
> myself and the other posters here on your article, that have used the
> software raid very successfully for long periods of time... and we wouldn't
> want you to discourage the new users based upon an problem that was
> presented emotionally and without enough supporting facts.

The newbies should be forwarned not to install such a buggy kernel.
Alot of people rely on the stability of the system and don't make
regular backups. You and I seem to make those backups. Some folks
don't.

Stephen

Relevant Pages

  • Re: SuSE: migrating tot linux software RAID?
    ... > third machine with a megaraid that crashed because of this kernel ... >> The reason that you had data loss at all... ... > I had backups and successfully restored the system after a full install. ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: [PATCH] CodingStyle: add typedefs chapter
    ... The reason we have them for things like pte_t etc. is that there ... then by all means go ahead and use a typedef. ... New types which are identical to standard C99 types, ... covers RTL which is used frequently with assembly language in the kernel. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Forth for Mac OS X Leopard (Intel) - what are the options?
    ... As I understand it even FreeBSD binaries are elf. ... If the .data section works for the kernel part of xina, ... The official way is to use linker scripts. ... For some reason a normal start address in linux32 is around ...
    (comp.lang.forth)
  • Re: eradicating out of tree modules (was: : Linux Security *Module* Framework)
    ... reasons, won't ever be accepted into the mainline kernel tree, what you ... crashes of "the Linux kernel" caused by some binary-only driver. ... it's still a reason for fixing the real problem. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: RFT: updatedb "morning after" problem [was: Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23]
    ... Upon completion, it actually frees enough memory that swap-prefetch _could_ help on some boxes, while the real issue is that they should first and foremost dump GNU locate. ... I'm not saying the kernel needs to fix the software itself, but the kernel should try and keep such software from hurting the rest of the system where it can. ... (reading this thread it sometimes seems like the downside is that updatedb shouldn't cause this problem and so if you fixed updatedb there wold be no legitimate benifit, or alturnatly this patch doesn't help updatedb so there's no legitimate benifit) ... it's not that they shouldn't have been swapped out, it's that the reason they were swapped out no longer exists. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
Loading