fix remote degraded gmirror

[Robin Becker]

krad wrote:
...........
>>
> 
> probably not but possibly. What is the server you have is it a custom build
> one? Does it have a drive cage? Can you make the hd light blink?

I've never seen the machinery.

> 
> Is the remote hands going to go inside the case for you, as I think he might
> to have to trace the cables to work out what drive is the correct one?
> 

I thought the serial number would help with that,

> 
> Personally I would recommend that you or one of your trusted engineers goes
> down an replaces the drive yourself. Remote hands engineers in my experiance
> are a bit crude, and at the end of the day dont care about your box as much
> as you would.

but you're probably right about the remote hands being uncaring :(

> 
> While you or your guy is down there he could do a proper job and label up
> all the drives so in future you can get remote hands to do it all for you.
> 
it's still under discussion anyway whether we just abandon the machine; the 
current colo company took over our freebsd machines from another and they don't 
provide freebsd support anyway. The alternative ugh is to switch to ubuntu.

I suspect if we do go ahead it will come down to one of our guys going down 
there to do the hands on.

I'm still looking for good examples of exactly how to do the actual recovery. I 
assume I can just do

gmirror remove gm0 /dev/ad4

to eliminate the bad disk.

However, will the system still reboot from the disk on /dev/ad6 or should the 
good disk be swapped into the /dev/ad4 position. I don't know enough about sata 
booting, but I suppose it can be configured through our serial console.

If the system does boot then the other disk can be inserted with gmirror insert 
gm0 /dev/ad6, but I am not sure whether any partitioning/formatting etc etc is 
required, Dru Lavigne was my guide when we installed this stuff, but this is the 
first time it's failed and she doesn't mention the repair process.
-- 
Robin Becker