From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Mar 18 14:59: 1 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6B36A37B416 for ; Mon, 18 Mar 2002 14:58:36 -0800 (PST) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 53B5C78317; Tue, 19 Mar 2002 09:28:34 +1030 (CST) Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 09:28:34 +1030 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey To: "Giles, George S" Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Vinum Raid 5 Problem Message-ID: <20020319092834.X93909@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20020318112024.B70252@wantadilla.lemis.com> <235204156.1016436324@george> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <235204156.1016436324@george> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] Quoted text completely mangled. On Monday, 18 March 2002 at 7:25:24 -0600, Giles, George S wrote: > --On Monday, March 18, 2002 11:20 AM +1030 Greg Lehey wrote: >> [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] >> >> Computer output wrapped. >> >> On Sunday, 17 March 2002 at 8:37:31 -0600, Giles, George S wrote: >>> >>> My system has three identical disks. The following config does >>> not work: >>> >>> 1 volumes: >>> V myRaidFive State: down Plexes: 1 Size: >>> 8192 MB >> >> Care to have a guess what "down" means? >> >>> 1 plexes: >>> P myRaidFive.p0 R5 State: init Subdisks: 3 Size: >>> 8192 MB >> >> "init" may not be so obvious. That's why it's described in the >> man page: >> >> >> init [-S] size [-w] plex | subdisk >> >> vinum init initializes a subdisk by writing zeroes >> to it. You can initialize all subdisks in a plex by >> specifying the plex name. This is the only way to >> ensure consistent data in a plex. You must perform >> this initialization before using a RAID-5 plex. It >> is also recommended for other new plexes. vinum initializes >> all subdisks of a plex in parallel. Since this operation can >> take a long time, it is normally performed in the background. If >> you want to wait for completion of the command, use >> the -w (wait) option. >> >> Specify the -S option if you want to write blocks of >> a different size from the default value of 16 kB. >> vinum prints a console message when the >> initialization is complete. > > The problem turned out to be the specification of the disk sizes in > gigabytes with a g when megabytes were used it all worked as > expected. No, that is incorrect. It's as I stated: you need to initialize RAID-5 plexes before you can use them. If you have somehow found out how to use a RAID-5 plex without initializing it (there are some back doors which I won't describe), you'll have complete and utter data corruption if you lose a spindle. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message