F11 dmraid assistance (raid1)

Michael Cronenworth mike at cchtml.com
Tue Nov 3 01:30:45 UTC 2009


I'm pulling my hair out over a RAID1 setup.

* Two 1TB Seagate 7200.12 drives (sda and sdb)
* RAID1 using Intel OROM.
* Two partitions: /boot partition ext3, LVM2 encrypted partition with / 
XFS and swap
* sdb formed a bad sector, I'm going to RMA it.
* There are no other hard drives attached.

First I attempted to shutdown and unplug the bad drive. Fedora wouldn't 
boot -- gets to Password: prompt for encrypted partition. Correct 
password is entered but the encrypted partition cannot be mounted. I 
narrowed it down to that the /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 partitions are not 
showing up so the kernel can't find the correct UUID from /etc/crypttab 
to mount /.

Second, I plugged the bad drive back in. Fedora boots normally.

Third, I get brave and remove the bad drive from the RAID using the 
Intel OROM. I then turn off the machine and remove the bad drive. Fedora 
won't boot -- gets past password prompt, but during bootup it cannot 
find my /boot partition and dumps me to a recovery shell.

Fourthly, I plug the bad drive back in and Fedora boots. The bad drive 
is no longer in the RAID, but its old partitions are exposed. The UUID 
of /dev/sdb1 matches and so it mounts /boot.

Fifthly, I couldn't get the bad drive to rebuild so I used a Fedora Live 
USB install to start the rebuild. Rebooted and Fedora wouldn't boot. No 
/dev/sda1 partition and no /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdb2 partitions!

Now I'm stuck in a loop inbetween the 3rd and 4th attempt at safely 
removing the bad drive from my RAID1 array. I only see the following in 
/dev:
ls -l /dev/sd*
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8,  0 2009-11-02 19:16 /dev/sda
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8,  2 2009-11-02 19:15 /dev/sda2
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 16 2009-11-02 19:16 /dev/sdb
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 17 2009-11-02 19:15 /dev/sdb1
brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 18 2009-11-02 19:15 /dev/sdb2

This is with the bad drive not in the array of course. What happened to 
my /dev/sda1 partition? Fdisk shows it. Gparted shows it. Linux doesn't! 
It is obviously still there as with my bad drive out I can boot. I don't 
get it.

Thanks,
Michael




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