On 23/09/2009, at 1:01 AM, Jeffrey C. Smith wrote:

quoted text
> Paul M wrote:
>> Thinking about this some more, I suspect that what may be happening 
>> is that
>> the disk still thinks it is a spare. Try blowing away the RAID 
>> partition,
>> possibly even replace it with a regular partition and write data to 
>> it just
>> to make sure. Then delete that, recreate the RAID partition and try 
>> again to
>> reconstruct the component.
>> (It may also be possible to achieve this with the -r option to 
>> raidctl, but
>> I'm unfamiliar with the operation of this switch).
>
> I will nuke the raid partition. I'll relabel is as a regular partition 
> and format a file system on it. I'll then relabel it again as a RAID 
> partition. I assume that would count as a "nuke 'em from space".  :)
>
> Once it's nuked what are the series of steps to add it as a component 
> to the array? I want to make sure I get it right this time.

Once you have a clean disk with an unused RAID partition on it, reboot 
and check
that it's still identified as wd1d. At this point, 'raidctl -s raid0' 
should know
of it's existance. There should be a message in dmesg too.
There should be no mention of 'component1'.

Now 'raidctl -R /dev/wd1d raid0' should initiate a reconstruction of 
this disk.

That should be all you need.

You should check all this in the man page to ensure you understand what 
you're
typing too. I may have made a typo, left something out, or just plain 
got it
wrong. I dont believe so, but it's your system and you're the one 
typing the
commands so it's ultimately all down to you.
I agree that the man page takes quite a bit of work, but it is all 
there.


quoted text
>> Essentially, you configured the disk as a spare, now you want to 
>> override
>> that configuration and configure it as a component.
>> The man page does say that the spare and the component it was 
>> reconstructed
>> from are interchangeable, but I think the system is getting confused 
>> as to
>> just what wd1d is.
>
> OK...
>
>> Taking a different approach, you could keep wd1d as the spare, but 
>> add a 3rd disk to replace the failed component and simply reconstruct 
>> onto that (using the -B switch to raidctl)
>
> I will look in the box to see if I can get another drive in there. I 
> may  be space constrained...
>
>> Also - dont forget about the syslog.
>
> Sorry, but I'm not clear on what you mean here? Could you clarify?

When tracking down almost any problem with the system, the syslog 
should be checked to see if there
are any clues. It may even point directly to the cause.
 >cat /var/log/messages

and/or:
 >zcat /var/log/messages.n.gz
where n refers the file corresponding to the time you're interested in, 
to look further back in time.


paulm