growing a graid3 array and growfs not growing ....

[Tim Judd]

Sorry to revive an old thread..  I am working with raid3 vs raid5 at
home to understand the difference better.  And this might help the OP.



RAID3 has a dedicated parity drive, and the number of consumers must be (2^n)+1
  (2^1)+1 = 3
  (2^2)+1 = 5
  (2^3)+1 = 9

RAID5 is a distributed parity, and what seems an unlimited number of consumers.


And about the fdisk error.  See under providers the line: "sectorsize:
2048" - means that /boot/mbr (512 bytes) does not match the sectorsize
of the provider, 2048 bytes.  You'll have to append out the MBR file
with zeros to fit the provider's sectorsize before fdisk will even
consider placing it into the provider.



Now --
  A RAID array will only be as big as it's smallest member/consumer.
5x drives are probably rebuilding as the original size because of the
other 4 consumers being the smaller size.



Hope this helps paint a bigger picture for the OP.

On 5/29/09, Vikash Badal <Vikash.Badal at is.co.za> wrote:
> Can someone please advise why growfs would return:
> growfs: we are not growing (8388607->4194303) ?
>
>
> I have a FreeBSD 7.2 server in a VM.
> I initially had 5 x 4G disks
>
> Created a raid
> graid3 label datavol da2 da3 da4 da5 da6
>
> I upgraded them to 5 x 8g disks
>
> swopped out the virtual disks one at a time
>
> graid3 remove -n 0 datavol
> graid3 insert -n 0 datavol da2
> [wait]
> ......
> graid3 remove -n 4 datavol
> graid3 insert -n 4 datavol da6
> [wait]
>
> graid3 stop datavol
> growfs /dev/raid3/datavol
>
> error message: growfs: we are not growing (8388607->4194303) ?
>
> vix-sw-raid# graid3 list
> Geom name: datavol
> State: COMPLETE
> Components: 5
> Flags: NONE
> GenID: 0
> SyncID: 1
> ID: 2704170828
> Zone64kFailed: 0
> Zone64kRequested: 0
> Zone16kFailed: 0
> Zone16kRequested: 0
> Zone4kFailed: 0
> Zone4kRequested: 524
> Providers:
> 1. Name: raid3/datavol
>    Mediasize: 34359736320 (32G)
>    Sectorsize: 2048
>    Mode: r0w0e0
> Consumers:
> 1. Name: da2
>    Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
>    Sectorsize: 512
>    Mode: r1w1e1
>    State: ACTIVE
>    Flags: NONE
>    GenID: 0
>    SyncID: 1
>    Number: 0
>    Type: DATA
> 2. Name: da3
>    Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
>    Sectorsize: 512
>    Mode: r1w1e1
>    State: ACTIVE
>    Flags: NONE
>    GenID: 0
>    SyncID: 1
>    Number: 1
>    Type: DATA
> 3. Name: da4
>    Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
>    Sectorsize: 512
>    Mode: r1w1e1
>    State: ACTIVE
>    Flags: NONE
>    GenID: 0
>    SyncID: 1
>    Number: 2
>    Type: DATA
> 4. Name: da5
>    Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
>    Sectorsize: 512
>    Mode: r1w1e1
>    State: ACTIVE
>    Flags: NONE
>    GenID: 0
>    SyncID: 1
>    Number: 3
>    Type: DATA
> 5. Name: da6
>    Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
>    Sectorsize: 512
>    Mode: r1w1e1
>    State: ACTIVE
>    Flags: NONE
>    GenID: 0
>    SyncID: 1
>    Number: 4
>    Type: PARITY
>
>
> fdisk /dev/raid3/datavol
> ******* Working on device /dev/raid3/datavol *******
> parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
> cylinders=1044 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
>
> Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
> parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
> cylinders=1044 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
>
> fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
> fdisk: /boot/mbr: length must be a multiple of sector size
>
>
> what am I missing ?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Please note: This email and its content are subject to the disclaimer as
> displayed at the following link
> http://www.is.co.za/legal/E-mail+Confidentiality+Notice+and+Disclaimer.htm.
> Should you not have Web access, send a mail to disclaimers at is.co.za and a
> copy will be emailed to you.
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>