raid or not raid

[kalin mintchev]

>> >
>> > i have a box in a remote hosting facility that claims that the machine
>> has
>> > two discs raided in it but df and fstab show only one disc with a
>> bunch of
>> > slices.
>> > under devices there is another name - ad6 - but it's not mounted
>> anywhere.
>> > the one i see both in df and the fstab is ad4 with one big slice and
>> > different partitions....
>> >
>> > they insist there are 2 raided discs in tha machine. the os is 5.4 and
>> i
>> > think at that point the raid drivers were still considered
>> 'experimental'.
>> >
>> > it makes sense to me that if i don't see a second drive in the fstab
>> there
>> > isn;t any mounting which means that there is no raid going on...
>> >
>> > is there any other way i can make sure if raid is actually on?
>> > would there will be any logs somewhere?
>> > the machine has been up for about 2 years and the dmesg is long
>> gone...
>> >
>> > thanks.....
>> >
>
> Lots of people here know plenty about RAID,
> but you don't provide very much information.

ok. fair enough...  thanks.

> If dmesg itself returns none of the startup info,
> you can look in /var/log/dmesg.[today|yesterday].

as i mentioned the machine has been up without reboot for almost 2 years...

> /usr/sbin/pciconf can tell you what controller(s)
> may be attached.

right, i forgot about pciconf...
i can see one SATA and one EIDE controllers. both ATA subclass. no RAID
controllers. nothing about RAID anywhere from pciconf....

> A proper RAID will show up as a single device,
> just like any hard drive (but different).

what do you mean by 'but different'? the actual df output lists this:

# df -h
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad4s1a    290M     81M    186M    30%    /
devfs          1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/ad4s1d    989M     50K    910M     0%    /tmp
/dev/ad4s1f     15G    5.0G    8.4G    37%    /usr
/dev/ad4s1e    989M     33M    877M     4%    /var
/dev/ad4s1g    126G     90G     25G    78%    /work

i read it as one disk - ad4 - with one big slice 1 and 5 partitions.
am i wrong? fstab shows same devices.

> It does seem odd to me that a (supposed) RAID
> would show up as /dev/ad4.

please elaborate. do you mean that the raided disks will have another
id/name rather than 'ad'?

> Possibilities:
> Your RAID really is on /dev/ad4 and /dev/ad6 is
> something unexplained.
> Your RAID controller is unsupported in 5.x and
> not Doing The Right Thing but somehow still (kind
> of) working as a normal [S]ATA controller.
> Your RAID controller is unsupported in 5.x and
> your hosting company realised this and wired
> the shebang up as a normal [S]ATA controller
> because they couldn't get FreeBSD to install
> otherwise.
> There is a RAID controller and there are two disks
> connected to it, but the controller was not set up
> correctly.
> There is a RAID controller and there are two disks
> connected to some other controller which might lead
> to some interesting phone calls.
> Your remote hosting company put a RAID with two
> disks in some random machine and someone else
> is complaining on some other list about the inverse
> of your problem.

ok. i guess i'd explore the 'interesting phone calls' one.
if it doesn;t walk like a duck and it doesn;t quack like a duck it must be
some other bird/thing...


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