Help Setting up Linux Raid Server Post: 302518422

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Operating Systems Linux Help Setting up Linux Raid Server Post 302518422 by lorewap3 on Friday 29th of April 2011 02:55:25 PM

04-29-2011

Registered User

Help Setting up Linux Raid Server

I just built a home computer with 3TB hard drives I wanted to set up in a RAID 5 and load Ubuntu server onto it.

The first thing I did was set up the drives in a RAID 5 using just the motherboard chipset software to do it, so a 'hardware' RAID basically.

I installed Windows first to see if all the hardware works ok (that seemed the easiest way to verify it) and with the exception of the ethernet card (which needed a driver disk to work) everything was plug n' play and worked wonderfully. After that I booted the Windows install disk again to delete the partitions, hoping Ubuntu 10.10 server would create its own.

The problem I'm having is no matter what I've tried (deleting and recreating the RAID 5 setup, departitioning the drives), whenever I try to install Ubuntu it won't recognize the RAID as a valid disk. Ironically, it did at first, because I installed windows to verify the hardware. The ethernet card wasn't working automatically in the Ubuntu setup, (although it found the unformatted RAID drive), so I installed windows and figured out it was just the drivers that needed to be installed.

So now when I try to install Ubuntu, it finds the ethernet card perfectly and connects to the internet during the installation...but that actually stinks because it's telling me it's still accessing the drivers from the drives that I thought I formatted. Once it gets to the storage part of the installation afterwards, it can't find the RAID drive anymore. I tells me to choose a disk from the list, but the list is blank. So I can't install on it.

If I remove the RAID entirely and just keep the drives as 3 separate IDE drives, it finds every drive perfectly and can install to either one I choose. But I don't want this, I definitely need them RAIDed.

I would appreciate any advice at all on this, or even suggestions on another way of doing it. I've heard many people claim to dislike hardware RAIDs for linux servers and recommend using a software RAID instead. I am new to either, so I'd be happy to consider a software RAID if I knew it would be better/easier.

Any suggestion on a distrobution would be nice, too. I think I like the KDE interface, making me consider Kubuntu, but primarily I just want a server with the trimmings to access it from afar...LAMP,Email,SSH, and Remote Desktop.

Thanks for any advice!

Will P.

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LEARN ABOUT NETBSD

arcmsr

ARCMSR(4)						   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						 ARCMSR(4)

NAME

     arcmsr -- Areca Technology Corporation SATA/SAS RAID controller

SYNOPSIS

     arcmsr* at pci? dev ? function ?

DESCRIPTION

     The arcmsr driver provides support for the PCI-X and PCI Express RAID controllers from Areca Technology Corporation:

	   -   ARC-1110 PCI-X 4 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1110ML PCI-X 4 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1120 PCI-X 8 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1120ML PCI-X 8 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1130 PCI-X 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1130ML PCI-X 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1160 PCI-X 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1160ML PCI-X 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1170 PCI-X 24 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1200 Rev A PCI Express 2 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1202 PCI Express 2 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1210 PCI Express 4 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1220 PCI Express 8 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1230 PCI Express 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1230ML PCI Express 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1231ML PCI Express 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1260 PCI Express 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1260ML PCI Express 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1261ML PCI Express 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1280 PCI Express 24 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1280ML PCI Express 24 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680 PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680LP PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680i PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680x PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1681 PCI-X 8 Port SAS RAID Controller

     These controllers support RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6, and JBOD using either SAS or SATA II drives.

     arcmsr supports management and monitoring of the controller through the bioctl(8) and envstat(8) commands.

     Please note, however, that to use some features that require special privileges, such as creating/removing hot-spares, pass-through disks or
     RAID volumes will require to have the password disabled in the firmware; otherwise a Permission denied error will be reported by bioctl(8).

     When a RAID 1 or 1+0 volume is created, either through the bioctl(8) command or controller's firmware, the volume won't be accessible until
     the initialization is done.  A way to get access to the sd(4) device that corresponds to that volume without rebooting, is to issue the fol-
     lowing command (once the initialization is finished):

     $ scsictl scsibus0 scan any any

     The arcmsr driver will also report to the kernel log buffer any error that might appear when handling firmware commands, such as used by the
     bioctl(8) command.

EVENTS

     The arcmsr driver is able to send events to powerd(8) if a volume or any drive connected to the volume is not online.  The state-changed
     event will be sent to the /etc/powerd/scripts/sensor_drive script when such condition happens.

SEE ALSO

     intro(4), pci(4), scsi(4), sd(4), bioctl(8), envstat(8), powerd(8), scsictl(8)

HISTORY

     The arcmsr driver first appeared in NetBSD 5.0.

AUTHORS

     The arcmsr driver was originally written for OpenBSD by David Gwynne.  It was ported to NetBSD and extended by Juan Romero Pardines.

BSD
								   March 3, 2008							       BSD