0

I am not an experienced Linux or Ubuntu user. I do have many years of software/hardware tech support experience. A customer brought in a DOA Dell Precision 670 Workstation that was set up as a web server that had been held hostage at a "Repair Shop" for over 6 months. It has a RAID 1 Mirror using the on board Dell SATA RAID controller for the OS volume which WILL boot up. It also has an add on Syba SD-SATA-4P PCI-E RAID card. There are 4-1.8 TB SATA Drives installed in the drive cage. Here is my problem....the person that built this box has disappeared which has made me SOL since this box arrived. I have no way of knowing was this a hardware or software RAID 5 config. The motherboard in this box had blown capacitors, no memory, and the 4 SATA drives which obviously were once connected to the Syba card were disconnected.

Linux - Ubuntu Server Version 12.04.3 LTS

I replaced the MB and memory and got the system to boot to linux. Once booted it says it can't find /var which is obviously supposed to be on RAID 5 volume. I found a cryptic legend scribbled inside the chassis indicating drive 0,1,2,3 connections to Syba card. I have connected the cables accordingly but the volume is still not found. The Syba doesn't show any specific RAID settings. Looks like default SATA settings to me.

The one other thing I have is a config sheet that says it is a 4x1.8 TB RAID 5: 3x1.8 TB /var with 1.8 TB spare. Is there a utility I can run to "peek" at the settings on the drives? Will it tell me that the drives are configged as linux software RAID 5? Do I have to have a syba driver loaded to see the drives?
I booted a gpart disk and all i see is 1 Logical OS drive RAID1 and the other 4 HD's. I am very leary to continue further without some guidance.
Any help would be appreciated.

TIA - Brian

here are my results. sorry, I posted that as an answer..

sudo parted -1 
unable to mkdir /var/lib/sudo: no such file or directory

sudo blkid /dev/sda3: 
uuid="0736942d.......................uuid_sub........label="gray2" type=linux_ raid_member

/dev/sda5: uuid="eodf5de1.......................uuid_sub........label="file1:125" type=linux_ raid_member

/dev/sdb3: uuid="0736942d.......................uuid_sub........label="gray2" type=linux_ raid_member

/dev/sdb5: uuid="eodf5de1.......................uuid_sub........label="file1:125" type=linux_ raid_member

/dev/md2: uuid="66ba53ca.........type="swap"

/dev/md125: label="Root" uuid="f02218b5.................type="ext4"

I guess what I see is sda3 and sda5 are partitions on drive 0 on board controller and...................sdb3 and sdb5 are partitions on drive 1 on board controller which should actually be mirrored RAID 1

md2 is a spare drive or swap file for RAID 5 and md125 or ext4 is the RAID 5 logical volume?? Does this mean that it is indeed linux software RAID 5 or is it looking for that volume?? And most important.... Is it recoverable?

4
  • Start with running sudo parted -l and sudo blkid and adding the output to your question.
    – psusi
    Mar 9, 2015 at 23:30
  • I have run the commands you suggested and posted the results with my original question. could you please look at results and let me know what I should do to proceed? Thx - Brian
    – bgray1961
    Mar 11, 2015 at 16:18
  • I edited your answer to make it more readable. You can do this in the future by highlighting the block of text you pasted and clicking the code sample button that looks like "<$>".
    – psusi
    Mar 12, 2015 at 22:50
  • actually i did run as you first suggested....i.e. simply – sudo blkid I manually typed all this in to the forum. all i see are 2 hard drives with same uuid which i think it means there is 2 partitions on each drive and they are mirrored RAID 1 uuid=e0df5de1 and uuid 0736942d. However, I am no unix guru so correct me or enlighten me please. then is see this stray uuid 66ba53ca which says it is swap and then the root uuid f02218b5. if the RAID 5 are showing up, how do i mount them? –
    – bgray1961
    Mar 16, 2015 at 21:32

1 Answer 1

0

You have software raid. Your output looks odd so I think what you did was run sudo blkid /dev/xxx for each of several block devices. If you just run sudo blkid with no arguments, it should list everything and there should be /dev/126 and /dev/127 in there. Those are your raid volumes and those are what you want to mount to access your data on them. They should just show up in the gui when you boot the live cd and open a file explorer.

5
  • actually i did run as you first suggested....i.e. simply
    – bgray1961
    Mar 13, 2015 at 20:43
  • I manually typed all this in to the forum. all i see are 2 hard drives with same uuid which i think it means there is 2 partitions on each drive and they are mirrored RAID 1 uuid=e0df5de1 and uuid 0736942d. However, I am no unix guru so correct me or enlighten me please. then is see this stray uuid 66ba53ca which says it is swap and then the root uuid f02218b5. if the RAID 5 are showing up, how do i mount them?
    – bgray1961
    Mar 16, 2015 at 21:30
  • @bgray1961, as I said, raid arrays are /dev/mdXX. You listed md125, but if there is a 125 there should also be a 126 and 127. The label on 125 says it is your root filesystem. One of the other two should be what you are looking for. cat /proc/mdstat should provide more information on the arrays.
    – psusi
    Mar 19, 2015 at 0:29
  • I really appreciate your patience trying to help me especially considering my inexperience. I ran the cat /proc/mdstat and found nothing more than what we have been seeing. I booted to the desktop version of the ubuntu live cd and ran the sudo parted -1 , sudo blkid , and cat /proc/mdstat and don't see anything new here either. I do see the 2 mirror drives that we have been seeing as well as the 4 drives that should belong to the RAID 5 when I browse the files via the gui from live cd but they look unpartitioned. bad feeling that the drives may have been config on RAID card and lost info
    – bgray1961
    Mar 20, 2015 at 17:36
  • @bgray1961, no, you definitely have software raid. Add the output of cat /proc/mdstat to your question, as well as sudo mdadm -E /dev/sda[35]
    – psusi
    Mar 20, 2015 at 22:19

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .