Mitchell: ----- Original Message ----- From: Mitchell Laks [mailto:mlaks@xxxxxxxxxxx] To: linux-raid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 02:36:54 -0600 Subject: multiple Sata SATAII 150, TX4 - how to tell which drive is which? headaches galore! > Dear Experts, > > I wanted to ask for any experience with running raid with SATA drives and > controllers here under linux. > > I have been having an interesting time! > > I initially tried to use raid1 on my asus A8v motherboard > using a mixture of SATA controllers - > the built in motherboard SATA controller (via vt8237) > as well as a Promise PCI card SATAII 150, > but had problems with the kernel. My drives gave me all sorts of errors > while > trying to build the raids and while running mkfs.ext3 > and i couldn't get it to work reliably with the any of the current kernels > I > tried, including 2.6.15.1 the current stable kernel. > I get countless kernel errors as I mentioned in an earlier post. > > Now I have switched to only using the PCI card controllers ( Well, I can put > > multiple controllers into the motherboard). So I use only sata_promise and > get rid of sata_via, which conflicts (according to my experience). > > Now however, when a drive gives me errors - how can I identify which drive > on > which device is failing? > > The kernel seems to name things randomly. > > This is important when a drive 'fails'. Which drive failed? If I am dealing > with /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb1 /dev/hdc1 /dev/hdd1 on the two ide channels > then I 'know' which is which. > > Even crazier (from an accounting point of view) is the following. > > if I have 2 of these cards, then the sata_promise driver does not appear to > distinguish "where" (ie: which physical controller port on ___which___ card) > > the drives are. > > The letters don't skip to show you are on a second controller -even if you > leave blank slots to try to see... > The kernel randomly calls the drives sda sdb sdc sdd sde and they seem to > be > anywhere on the physical controllers. It seems to be completely random. > HELP! > > I since I run a bunch of raid1's, if I get errors I have a major chore. So I > > must stop and reboot countless times doing a binary search using mdadm > -E /dev/sd[ab]1 |grep UU to find the UUID's of the misbehaving drives. > Then > look closely at mdadm -E of the 2 final candidates to see which one gave me > these errors. > > For instance a new drive failed while I was installing the raid, and > testing. > To find the erroring drive I had to reproduce the errors each time by > creating the raids, and running mkfs.ext3 which seems to cause the errors. > What if the errors were more occult???? > > Each card had 4 controllers - however when I have more than 1 card it can be > > even more difficult to identify where we are. > > Any experience out there to help me? > > Thanks, > > Mitchell Laks > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
