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Date:      Mon, 4 Mar 2013 11:27:58 -0500
From:      Charles Sprickman <spork@bway.net>
To:        Daniel Kalchev <daniel@digsys.bg>
Cc:        freebsd-fs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: benefit of GEOM labels for ZFS, was Hard drive device names... serial numbers
Message-ID:  <6F419054-DC4E-43A7-8879-37BE54D10A47@bway.net>
In-Reply-To: <513479BE.1060109@digsys.bg>
References:  <512FE773.3060903@physics.umn.edu> <5134693B.30408@brockmann-consult.de> <513479BE.1060109@digsys.bg>

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On Mar 4, 2013, at 5:38 AM, Daniel Kalchev wrote:

> What you do when the disk is dead, and you don't know which one it is =
in a rather big rack full of disks?
>=20
> Perhaps, you offline each and every disk in the system until you =
eliminate all but one? :)

One thing that I recently discovered is led(4).

I have no idea how ubiquitous support for this is, but I see it on both =
a Supermicro and a Tyan board.  In /dev/led, things are labelled like =
so:

[spork@util2 ~]$ ls -l /dev/led/
total 0
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  40 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich0.fault
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  39 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich0.locate
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  42 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich1.fault
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  41 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich1.locate
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  44 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich2.fault
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  43 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich2.locate
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  46 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich3.fault
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  45 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich3.locate
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  48 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich4.fault
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  47 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich4.locate
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  50 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich5.fault
crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  49 Feb  9 00:20 ahcich5.locate

If you pair that up with boot messages, you can probably sort out which =
drive is which:

[spork@util2 ~]$ grep "at ahcich1" /var/run/dmesg.boot=20
ada1 at ahcich1 bus 0 scbus1 target 0 lun 0

And then you can blink the "locate" LED on the sas/sata backplane:

root@util2:/home/spork # echo f > /dev/led/ahcich0.locate

And disable the blinking after you're done:

root@util2:/home/spork # echo 0 > /dev/led/ahcich0.locate

I'm sure this is all very hardware dependent, but if you have supported =
hardware, it's an easy way to find what's where.

Charles


> Hint: all disks die sooner or later.
>=20
> Dnaiel
>=20
> On 04.03.13 11:28, Peter Maloney wrote:
>> I just use zfs offline, then dd to read the disk, and pull the one =
that
>> blinks. :) zfs offline means the disk won't blink ever without me
>> causing it, so there's no confusion.
>>=20
>> I would only use a labelling system if I could easily label the disks =
on
>> the front too, but I don't have small enough labels... the disks have
>> too much vent space, so I assume the labels would just fall off, =
block
>> airflow, and be a hassle. And the servers are local, so dd isn't a =
problem.
>>=20
>>=20
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