Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 9 Mar 2005 15:24:48 -0800
From:      "Loren M. Lang" <lorenl@alzatex.com>
To:        Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-geom@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: gmirror metadata
Message-ID:  <20050309232448.GA28861@alzatex.com>
In-Reply-To: <1110408229.690.8.camel@zappa.Chelsea-Ct.Org>
References:  <200503091503.33431.michael.riexinger@de.clara.net> <20050309202225.GP9291@darkness.comp.waw.pl> <1110408229.690.8.camel@zappa.Chelsea-Ct.Org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

--W/nzBZO5zC0uMSeA
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 05:43:49PM -0500, Paul Mather wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 21:22 +0100, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 03:03:33PM +0100, Michael Riexinger wrote:
> > +> Hi,=20
> > +>=20
> > +> i have a hp dl320 with an integrated raid controller. I don't want t=
o=20
> > +> use that, instead i want to use gmirror. To use the 2 IDE drives, I=
=20
> > +> configured 2 raid0 arrays (each with 1 drive) in the controller's bi=
os.=20
> > +> Now i wanted to use gmirror, labeled the second drive. When I did a=
=20
> > +> reboot, the raid controller's bios seems to overwrite the gmirror=20
> > +> metadata with its own metadata. Is it impossible to use gmirror witc=
h=20
> > +> such a configuration?
> >=20
> > I'll be very odd if controller's BIOS overwrite disk data.
>=20
> Actually, I had the same type of thing happen to me.  I put a LSI
> MegaRAID IDE 100 that was lying around into my system and attached my
> existing geom_mirrored drives to it.  I didn't want to use the drives as
> an ATA RAID, and never set them up as that in the RAID BIOS.  I simply
> wanted to upgrade from my onboard ATA 33 to the ATA 100 speed the card
> supported, to get faster disk I/O.
>=20
> To my surprise and regret, my system wouldn't boot properly (couldn't
> locate the root filesystem) because the ATA RAID card had spammed its
> metadata over the geom_mirror metadata, and my drives were no longer
> detected as a geom_mirror.
>=20

I believe one difference between this and Micheal's situation is that,
as I understand it, you created the mirror with a normal ide controller,
then attached it to the raid controller after that, where Micheal
labelled it while it was under the raid controller.  A raid controller
might reserve a sector or track for it's own meta-data, but it should
still provide a slightly smaller disk that would be completely
transparent.  You couldn't see the raid controller's meta-data sectors
nor would any sectors you see or write to be modified by the raid
controller.

> Luckily, I was able to boot from a FreeSBIE CD and re-label my
> geom_mirror with gmirror, thus saving my system.  It was a bit
> disconcerting, though. :-)
>=20
> Cheers,
>=20
> Paul.
> --=20
> e-mail: paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu
>=20
> "Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
>  deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
>         --- Frank Vincent Zappa
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-geom@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-geom
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-geom-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"

--=20
I sense much NT in you.
NT leads to Bluescreen.
Bluescreen leads to downtime.
Downtime leads to suffering.
NT is the path to the darkside.
Powerful Unix is.

Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc
Fingerprint: CEE1 AAE2 F66C 59B5 34CA  C415 6D35 E847 0118 A3D2
=20

--W/nzBZO5zC0uMSeA
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD4DBQFCL4XAbTXoRwEYo9IRAkAOAJYtYCjcHrRboZiBKnwUJ1DyIEY6AJ9m/oVd
W0VR8YSsB3yhXVuYrYj72A==
=lybl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--W/nzBZO5zC0uMSeA--



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20050309232448.GA28861>