RAID recovery????

[Tod Merley]

On 8/18/06, Jeffrey Ross <jeff at bubble.org> wrote:
> I have a new (experimental) system that I installed software raid with.
>
> The system has 4 - identical 18GB SCSI disks and I installed the
> partitions as follows:
>
> /, /var, /usr, /home, and swap were made by carving out identical
> partitions out of the 4 disks and set as raid 5 with no spares
>
> The /boot partition was set raid 1 on the first two drives and set aside
> partitions on the other two disks as spares.
>
> Now I have failed my boot disk (SCSI ID 0) and I want to restore it,
> copying over the /boot partition and telling grub to use it wasn't that
> difficult, however I am at a loss to recover the other filesystems
> without being able to load "/" the system panics at boot time.
>
> What am I doing wrong?  This is a FC5 install as it came off the CD's
>
> Thanks, Jeff
>
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Hi Jeff!

0. If this is a chicken vs. egg "I can not read the disk until the
raid driver is installed" issue I am chatting with a guy under the
title "GRUB module query" on the Unbuntu forum (see
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users -- and advanced
Google search on the archives would enable you to see it I think).
Interesting issue.

I believe a bit more information would help us to help you.

1. The contents of /boot/grub/grub.conf (this is from memory, no FC5
in the house at this time but is in the works (my daughter took back
her laptop and Dapper came out at the same time).

2.  Output from a "parted" prompt.  Specifically "print" and so for each HD.

3.  From a grub prompt type "root" and then hit tab - note results and
select a result if appropriate - then hit tab again - note results ,,,
 If you can do this from an Xterm drag over the results - do "Edit >
Copy" and then paste into a WP or e-mail  so you can bring the results
here.

4. Spend some time in your CMOS Setup pages finding disk related
issues especialy related to machine location.

My fist guess (and at this point is is very much a guess) is that grub
is not being told where the root directory is.  See from my grub.conf:

oot at tod-laptop:/media/hda3/boot/grub# cat grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
#          root (hd0,2)
#          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda3
#          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
# hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img

Note the "root" line above!!!

Anyway, looking forward to hearing from you!

Good Hunting!

Tod