Re: Raid 1 + lilo
Earlier in this thread, there was a question of how hardware RAID would handle the failure of a drive on reboot. While at LinuxWorld I asked the Intel team how their controller would handle it. The answer was that the card would note the disk failure, notify you of the problem, rebuild the array once you replaced the bad drive and then the system would boot. Of course if you had a hot swap on line the rebuild would be automatic. It sounds like, for high availability with no hot swap, that software RAID with LILO on both drives could be a better choice. Your system would come back, although crippled, faster and be running while rebuilding the array. Seems from the discussions there is no right answer to which is better. A lot of factors weigh in such as availability of a hot swap, cost, availability vs. data integrity, etc. Pete -- http://www.elbnet.com ELB Internet Services, Inc. Web Design, Computer Consulting, Internet Hosting -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Raid 1 + lilo
Hello Russell On 30 Jan 2002, at 9:08, Russell Coker wrote: On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 22:43, I. Forbes wrote: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? http://www.coker.com.au/lilo/ Thanks very much. It almost looks like you put this together in response to my request. 2) has anybody written a nifty script which can be run by crond to read /proc/mdstat and send off e-mail if something is not healthy. I know this can't be too tricky, but any contributions to save re-inventing the wheel would be appreciated. I think that there's a package in woody for that, I can't seem to find it at the moment though. I see there is mdctl, as well as mdutils, raidtools2, and raidtools available in woody. All seem to have overlapping functionality and only one of them can be installed at a time. mdctl seems very new and appears to have a monitoring function. Up to now I have been using raidtools2, this is available in potato and woody. I am cautious to use mdctl as it is very new, documentation is a little sparse and it is not available on potato but in the long run I guess this will be the preferred utility. Has anybody had any experience with these tools? Thanks Ian - Ian Forbes ZSD http://www.zsd.co.za Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106 Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Raid 1 + lilo
On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 22:55, I. Forbes wrote: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? http://www.coker.com.au/lilo/ Thanks very much. It almost looks like you put this together in response to my request. Yes. 2) has anybody written a nifty script which can be run by crond to read /proc/mdstat and send off e-mail if something is not healthy. I know this can't be too tricky, but any contributions to save re-inventing the wheel would be appreciated. I think that there's a package in woody for that, I can't seem to find it at the moment though. I see there is mdctl, as well as mdutils, raidtools2, and raidtools available in woody. All seem to have overlapping functionality and only one of them can be installed at a time. mdctl seems very new and appears to have a monitoring function. That must be what I was thinking of. Up to now I have been using raidtools2, this is available in potato and woody. I am cautious to use mdctl as it is very new, documentation is a little sparse and it is not available on potato but in the long run I guess this will be the preferred utility. Has anybody had any experience with these tools? I had a quick look at mdctl, discovered that it is short on documentation, so much so that I found it difficult to get it to do anything. Then I discovered that mkinitrd doesn't support it (which was not a great surprise). So I'll probably look at it again when mkinitrd supports it. As long as it conflicts with raidtools2 and I need to have raidtools2 installed to be able to install a kernel and have it boot I can't use mdctl. -- http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Raid 1 + lilo
Hello Russell On 31 Jan 2002, at 2:08, Russell Coker wrote: On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 22:55, I. Forbes wrote: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? http://www.coker.com.au/lilo/ Thanks very much. It almost looks like you put this together in response to my request. Yes. There is a small bug with this package. When I try and install it I get a problem with conflicting manpage versions. The lilo-doc package installed without problems. nimbus2:~/debs# dpkg -i lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb dpkg: regarding lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb containing lilo: lilo conflicts with manpages ( 1.29-3) manpages (version 1.29-2) is installed. dpkg: error processing lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb (--install): conflicting packages - not installing lilo Errors were encountered while processing: lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb The manpages package installed is the latest stable version. Regards Ian - Ian Forbes ZSD http://www.zsd.co.za Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106 Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Raid 1 + lilo
On Thu, 31 Jan 2002 04:06, I. Forbes wrote: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? http://www.coker.com.au/lilo/ Thanks very much. It almost looks like you put this together in response to my request. Yes. There is a small bug with this package. When I try and install it I get a problem with conflicting manpage versions. The lilo-doc package installed without problems. nimbus2:~/debs# dpkg -i lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb dpkg: regarding lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb containing lilo: lilo conflicts with manpages ( 1.29-3) manpages (version 1.29-2) is installed. dpkg: error processing lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb (--install): conflicting packages - not installing lilo Errors were encountered while processing: lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb The manpages package installed is the latest stable version. Sorry I forgot about that. Use --force-conflicts and --force-overwrite, it's probably not worth releasing a new package just for this. Or you could just install the manpages package from woody. -- http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Raid 1 + lilo
Hello Russell Thanks Russell, I used --force-conflicts and it installed. I should have thought of that myself. Now I must find a time to reboot the machine to test it. In the meantime I will leave the magic boot stiffy in the 'a' drive - just in case we get a 3AM power failure ! (All the machines that can be conveniently rebooted are running woody ) Regards Ian On 31 Jan 2002, at 16:59, Russell Coker wrote: On Thu, 31 Jan 2002 04:06, I. Forbes wrote: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? http://www.coker.com.au/lilo/ Thanks very much. It almost looks like you put this together in response to my request. Yes. There is a small bug with this package. When I try and install it I get a problem with conflicting manpage versions. The lilo-doc package installed without problems. nimbus2:~/debs# dpkg -i lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb dpkg: regarding lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb containing lilo: lilo conflicts with manpages ( 1.29-3) manpages (version 1.29-2) is installed. dpkg: error processing lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb (--install): conflicting packages - not installing lilo Errors were encountered while processing: lilo_22.1-6potato1_i386.deb The manpages package installed is the latest stable version. Sorry I forgot about that. Use --force-conflicts and --force-overwrite, it's probably not worth releasing a new package just for this. Or you could just install the manpages package from woody. -- http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page - Ian Forbes ZSD http://www.zsd.co.za Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106 Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Raid 1 + lilo
Hello All As a follow-up to the closest to debian thread. I am using software raid 1, + IDE drives. On a woody system with the latest lilo and a new bios it seems pretty good. The bios will boot off the 2nd drive if the first one fails. Both disks have an MBR and lilo is on both disks via a mirrored /boot partition. I think this is pretty bullet proof and it handled everything I could simulate but I have not tried shooting out one of the drives! Now I am looking for 2 things: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? 2) has anybody written a nifty script which can be run by crond to read /proc/mdstat and send off e-mail if something is not healthy. I know this can't be too tricky, but any contributions to save re-inventing the wheel would be appreciated. Also on my wish list is a more advanced script which is run on boot- up which: - detects that one drive in the raid1 is not synced - and is presumably a new disk which has just been installed to replace a dead one. - reads /etc/raidtab, the partition table on both disks and probably a dedicated configuration file. - partitions the 'new' disk if required. - hot syncs the new partition(s) into the raid device(s). - runs 'mkswap' and 'swapon' to set up swap partitions on the new drive. - runs install-mbr and lilo to make the new disk bootable. This should all be done vary carefully with lots of checks so as not to wipe valid data! Maybe the script should be run manually with warning prompts. Thanks Ian - Ian Forbes ZSD http://www.zsd.co.za Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106 Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Raid 1 + lilo
On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 22:43, I. Forbes wrote: 1) has anybody got a 'deb' of the latest lilo, back-ported onto potato. I am looking for one to use on my stable machines? http://www.coker.com.au/lilo/ 2) has anybody written a nifty script which can be run by crond to read /proc/mdstat and send off e-mail if something is not healthy. I know this can't be too tricky, but any contributions to save re-inventing the wheel would be appreciated. I think that there's a package in woody for that, I can't seem to find it at the moment though. -- http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
