Re: ATARAID RH 7.3, need startup disk ... RH9?
From: Anthony Presley (anthony_at_zoraptera.com)
Date: 09/30/03
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Date: 29 Sep 2003 21:51:18 -0700
It was a harrowing day, but I wanted to list what happened for future
seekers of the path to being a superior being.
I have VMware on a machine, running RH7.3 (same config as the hosed
machine, but with no Promise chip). I booted it up, and did the same
thing (over-wrote glibc), which killed rpm (seg fault when trying to
run), but it rebooted fine, came up, and I could log in. Very
confusing.
After checking around, I built a custom RH9 Boot ISO (with ATARAID,
which the default BOOT kernel doesn't have), as well as prepared a
KNOPPIX boot CD for emergency use. My plan was:
--Attempt to boot the hosed machine and login. Upon failing....
--Attempt to boot into single-user mode. Upon failing....
--Attempt rescue with RH9 stock ISO. Upon failing....
--Attempt rescue with custom RH9. Upon failing....
--Attempt rescue with KNOPPX CD (which DOES include ATARAID, Promise
20276, LVM, etc... from BOOT). Upon failing....
--Break the RAID, attempt to access w/o the RAID. Upon failing....
--Scream, ship the box to TX for repairs.
That being said, Monday morning came around and we were ready to walk
through on the phone, having done the restores about 30 times over the
weekend. They came into work, booted it up (step 1), and it said it
could not find any hard drives (after grub and the kernel loaded). We
rebooted, and went into single-user mode, at which point it found the
hard drives, and booted perfectly. Curious, I thought, so we rebooted
and tried step 1 again -- it worked fine. Furthermore, I could login
with SSH, etc... Everything was fine. RPM didn't run, but rpm2cpio
did -- so I restored everything using rpm2cpio * | cpio -iudv and then
updated /etc/ld.so.conf. I then did a rpm -e of the glibc packages I
had screwed up, and then reinstalled the RH7.3, without a hitch.
Which makes no sense. Friday, I could not login, could not startup
Informix, could not get networked, etc... and today it worked fine,
even with GLIBC 2.3.2 running on RH7.3 -- how WEIRD.
If anyone can explain, please do. I was expecting a day of hell, and
instead, at 8am, it worked fine.
> > Err ... nope, the backups are onsite. What are you alluding to with
> > LVM and hardware RAID controller?
>
> I was unclear. With a RAID controller, you *should* be able to merge a
> large number of disks into a single RAIDset and have that occur in
> hardware, saving cycles from doing other sophisticated tasks (like LVM).
>
> What do you expect to gain from using LVM?
Resizable partitions that I can allocate based on the owner's desire
to launch new programs (ie, customer websites or a new database) w/o
running into as many growing pains.
> > Huh ... strange. Nope, I agree, and had I known what I knew now, some
> > 8 or so months ago, I wouldn't have implemented the hardware RAID,
> > would've stuck with software (which I know much better).
>
> That wouldn't have helped against *THIS* problem. You wouldn't have been
> able to use the Promise chipsets *at all*, even for non-RAID use.
Well, I'm still not sure what *THIS* problem was, because by my own,
yours, and everything I've read -- I was not in a good situation. I
couldn't have written a simpler "restore" solution.
> Various forms of hardware and software RAID have been in the Linux
> kernels for ages. ATARAID is not the problem. It's the Promise chipset
> and drivers for it: be *very* clear on what you need.
>
> Do you know the chipset of the FasTrak system? Can you have someone boot
> the damn thing and write down what it says? And what is your disk layout
> like?
Yup -- it's back up, so these are less important. But, around X-Mas
we will be moving from ATARAID to software RAID, with a good restore
solution hanging around.
- Next message: Paul Lutus: "Re: Newbie to Linux needs help - CDROM"
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- In reply to: Nico Kadel-Garcia: "Re: ATARAID RH 7.3, need startup disk ... RH9?"
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