On Wed, 02 May 2012 14:21:36 +0000, Camaleón wrote: > On Tue, 01 May 2012 17:29:17 +0000, Ramon Hofer wrote: > >> On Tue, 01 May 2012 16:16:07 +0000, Camaleón wrote: >> >>> What kind of hardware do you have (motherboard brand and model) and >>> what kind of hard disk controller do you need, what are your >>> expectations? >>> >>> SuperMicro boards (I'm also a SuperMicro user) are usually good enough >>> to use their embedded SAS/SATA ports, at least if you want to use a >>> software raid solution :-? >> >> I have a Supermicro C7P67 board. But there aren't any SAS connectors >> there. > > Ah, okay. This one: > > http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/P67/C7P67.cfm > > The board has no SAS ports but it features 8 SATA ports (4 SATA2 and 4 > SATA3), aren't those enough your your purpose? :-?
Yes, that's the mainboard I got. The case has two places to add os drives, one for a cdrom and 20 hot swapable disks. It was available with either SAS or SATA connectors. But I would have needed 23 SATA connectors on the mainboard or addon cards. The case with 5 SAS connectors was available and the SATA one had much later delivery date so I went for the SAS case. >> This is a home media server. Earlier I used a debian box with a raid >> and a disk for mythtv recordings. But I ran out of space and >> resurrected an ReadyNas NV+. But this was so slow and I wanted to have >> everything centralized. So I was looking for something else and found >> this case: >> >> http://cybershop.ri-vier.nl/4u-rackmnt-server-case-w20-hotswap-satasas- drv-bays-rpc4220-p-18.html >> >> They also had that SAS controller and on the Supermicro website they >> wrote it would be SUSE and Red Hat compatible. So I thought it runs too >> under Debian. > > Well, the driver status for most of the hardware out there can be > "misleading" many times. This is like a double-sided sword, you have to > carefully read the technical specs of the device to find out the chipset > it uses and then, search for its status in the kernel. If you rely on > hardware manufacturer's driver you are stuck: they can drop it at any > time or don't compile for your linux distribution version, which seems > to be this case :-( Sounds very true :-( >> So performance isn't very important. But I don't know what exactly you >> mean by expectations. > > Well, I wonder why is that you chose to go with SAS drives instead using > SATA given that the motehrboard only has SATA ports. When someone adds a > SAS controller is usually because he/she wnats to build a mainstream > server or expectes more performance/reliability than the average :-) Since I couldn't find any mainboards with more than 20 SATA ports and enough slots for addon cards (1x PCI, 2x PCI-Ex1 only for the tv cards). >> The controller should give access to the disks. They will mostly be >> slow green drives. It's not even a very big problem if it's limited to >> 3 TB but of course it would be nice if I could also go bigger in some >> years when I run out of space again and want to add another raid. > > Okay... I'll ask you again: why a SAS controller instead using the > embedded SATA ports? To be honest just because the case was ready at the dealer... >> So the media server contains one analogue PCI tuner card (PVR-500) and >> one (maybe in future a second one will be added) TeVii (S480) sat tuner >> card. >> >> Now I have one 500 GB disk as system drive but I'm thinking of adding >> another one as RAID1. > > This leads me to another question. Why RAID 1 for a media server? Just because the case has two places for os disks. But on the other hand it's seems to be interesting to set up a bootable raid1. And because it's calming to have the safety of the raid as it serves all the media I have: MythTV, LogitechMediaServer, etc. So my family relies on it and isn't amused when the system is down ;-) >> With the 20 hot swap slots in the case, the two system drives and an >> optical drive I need 23 sata connectors. Or better four SAS connectors >> and the eight SATA ports on the mainboard. >> >> I think software raid will cause me less cost and problem because when >> the controller fails I can replace it by anything that can talk SAS? > > Okay, let's see what we have for now: > > - A motherboard with 8 SATA ports > - A 4U case with up to 20 hot-swap drive bays for the disks (SATA/SAS) > > I wonder why is that you have not considered using SATA hard disks :-) Besides the fact of the longer delivery because I couldn't find cheaper solution than the two Supermicro SAS cards. The rest of the disks and optical drive. >>> Well, I'm not familiar with MD (I use hardware raid) but "md1 stopped" >>> and raid 5 with only 2 elements in the array does not sound very good >>> ;-( >> >> Ah, yes you're right :-o >> >> Was this during bootup? I recreated the array again after bootup... > > It could be... > >>> Ugh... and when is that happening, I mean, that "I/O error"? At >>> install time, when partitioning, after the first boot? >> >> This usually happens when I tried to create the filesystem on the raid >> array by >> >> sudo mkfs.ext4 -c -L test-device-1 /dev/md1 >> >> And when I then want to see details about the array (sudo mdadm >> --detail / dev/md1) the system crashes and I get the I/O error. >> >> This causes so much problem that I wasn't able to repair it when it >> happened the first time (afterwards I had nothing to recover ;-) ). >> >> I posted it here: >> >> http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/04/msg01290.html > > Too much hassle/problems for a simple raid5 volume :-( Yes, with my first system I had more luck to set it up: No problems iny any way at all :-) >>>> I've written a mail to Supermicro. Should I also create a Debian bug >>>> report? >>> >>> Yup, tough I think it will be forwarded upstream. >> >> Thanks I will run reportbug. >> >> But in the meantime I have installed the bpo kernel and it seems to be >> working now... >> At least it never run the disk check for so long, the raid is >> rebuilding and I can see the details as much as I want... > > Glag it's more stable now with an updated kernel but I'd be keep > monitoring the array during some days... and if you experience another > issue with the disks, I would reconsider in replacing the hard disk > controller or moving to SATA disks, instead. Thanks. I think I'll go with the solution Stan posted (LSI 9240-4i and Intel SAS expander). >>> Mmm, then the above FTP link you sent was correct, weird... >>> >>> Well, that ZIP file is for updating the "firmware" of the card, not >>> the driver. You should not update it unless you are completely sure >>> about what you are doing, and even more when there's data on the >>> array. Also, ensure that's the correct firmware version for you >>> card... >> >> You're about an hour too late :-o >> But I already had the newest firmware on the card. > > Oh. Hope all went well O:-) Yes, I hope to be able to sell them to Windows users :-) >> But I'm confused about the two different versions too. lspci shows: > > (I'm copying the rest of the message here) > >> 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. >> MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01) > > Well, lspci should display two different sets for the hard disk > controller: the SAS adapter (Marvell 88SE6480) and the motherboard > embedded chipset (Marvell 88SE9128) but none of these two matches with > the lscpi output :-? You're right: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=JQtrS5J2 Why don't they match :-? Best regards Ramon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jnrmqs$9rb$1...@dough.gmane.org