Re: GPU support for Linux 4.19

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 22 May 2020 16:52:29 +0200
n...@dismail.de wrote:
> > I only need Debian GNU/Linux to detect it and know which GPU is to
> > passthrough it to my Windows gaming VM, to play Windows-only games.
> > For Debian I already have Intel's IGPU.  
> 
> I may be mistaken, but  doesn't a proper GPU passthrough mean, the
> GPU to be passed through is never used by the host system and only by
> the guest (Windows) ?
> Meaning wherever or not the GPU works with Debian (your host) is
> irrelevant as the GPU will only be used by MS Windows as if MS
> Windows was the host itself ?
> 
> The ArchWiki seems to agree:
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#Isolating_the_GPU

True.
I have a similar setup.
All devices that are directly passed through to the guest OS (Windows)
are blacklisted on the host OS (Debian).
So there is no driver needed in the host OS for that GPU.


BR,
Ramon

Re: Debian 10 installer using serial output

[Ramon Hofer]

Thanks for you fast response, John.
This helped a lot.

> If you see the option the Debian installer page (Graphical install',
> 'install', 'install with speatch') press escape use the below at the
> boot prompt

Here was the problem. I do not see those options. The output waits
after 'ISOLINUX 6.04 20190226 EHDD'.

In retrospective it seems quite obvious since the installer does not
yet know how the serial settings are.

The fact that I had connected a keyboard with a Swiss german layout did
not help either. But imagining using a US keyboard worked.

The 'vga=none' part seems to be important too. Otherwise I received
"Undefined video mode number: 314" 


Although after the installation finished and I booted into the newly
installed system. I get the error message:


Loading Linux 4.19.0-9-amd64 ...
vga=none is deprecated. Use set gfxpayload=text before linux command
instead. error: unrecognized number.
Loading initial ramdisk ...
error: you need to load the kernel first.

Press any key to continue...



Therefore I used the following as the install options after hitting ESC:

install console=ttys0,115200n8 gfxpayload=text


Thanks again a lot for your quick and competent reply.


BR,
Ramon

Debian 10 installer using serial output

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I would like to install Debian on a headless board using a USB drive.
The board has a serial port and I would like to use that to install
Debian 10 using netinst.

It is an APU board [1]. I found a guide [2] on how to install Debian 9.
Unfortunately I get stuck at step 4 where the installer should be
configured to use the serial console:
"Press H, enter the following parameters and press Enter."
`install console=ttyS0,115200n8`

I can see the board's BIOS and select the USB installation media. But
the Debian installer only prints "ISOLINUX 6.04 20190226 EHDD"
Pressing H and typing the install command does not enable the serial
console of the installer.

From the LED of the USB drive I can see that is reacts to keyboard
inputs (e.g. when pressing enter), so the installer is loaded. But no
output is printed on the terminal console.

Is there an easy way to enable the console which I just don't know how
to do?

Even with Debian 9 (which was used in the guide [2]) I cannot see the
"Debian GNU/Linux installer boot menu".

How can I enable the serial console on the Debian installer?



BR,
Ramon


[1] https://pcengines.ch/apu.htm

[2]
https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/installing-debian-over-serial-console-apu-board/

[3] https://pastebin.com/97K6RhVt

Re: KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear all

I have contacted NVidia support for help.

In essence they said that they do not support KVM.
But when I asked about the deliberate disabling when virtualization is
detected, they wanted to help me and I had to grab some more
information about the guest system.

Full log: https://pastebin.com/UeqrEZgp

And the mentioned Windows system information file that I had to collect:
Windows system information: https://www.sendspace.com/file/l713tf

I will keep you updated with their answer.


Best regards,
Ramon

Re: KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear Alexander,

On Fri, 17 Nov 2017 13:09:38 +0500
"Alexander V. Makartsev"  wrote:

> How many video adapters in your host machine? In BIOS you have to
> select video adapter to be initialized first (ex. IGFX). It has to be
> other than GTX1080, and you can't use 1080 in your host OS if you
> want it to be passed through to guest OS. This is the reason why you
> need vfio stub drivers, to protect 1080 from host OS interference.

On the host machine I have the integrated graphics and the additional
NVidia card.

Not sure how to initialize it first. But I have chosen IGFX to be the
default.
The BIOS is shown on the monitor attached to the IGFX.
In the first setting I disabled the NVidia card I believe. Now it is
activated but not the primary card.

Thank you a lot for the explanations. I have a monitor attached to the
GTX1080, but only because I will want to use it in the guest.

I will check the configuration of the host: No NVidia driver,
blacklisted nouveau, vfio stub, and all of the virsh settings.
Also I will try a clean install of the host system and recreate the
guest(s).

What I just did is applying the virsh edit vendor_id and hidden state
settings:
/etc/libvirt/qemu/win10.xml: https://pastebin.com/7Rewq21Y

Then I started the Windows 10 guest and after checking that it did not
help, removed the GeFore card and the PCI devices in the Windows "device
drivers" screen. I then shut down the guest, removed and readded the
PCI devices in virt-manager and restarted the guest, made Windows
reinstall the driver, rebooted the guest again and still find the
error 43.

What makes me wonder: You write that the deliberate disabling of the
card is only implemented in the Windows version of the driver. But I
do find the same error using a Debian 9 guests.

Do you have any other ideas what I could try?


Thanks and best regards,
Ramon

Re: Re: KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear Alexander,

Thanks for your reply and sorry for my late response.
If I may ask you to reply to all and keep me in CC, this way I get the
email in my client and can easily answer.

> On 14.11.2017 02:37, Ramon Hofer wrote:
> > Thank you very much for your reply.
> > Interesting. I thought I was just not able to setup KVM / QEMU
> > properly. Because I read and heard that NVidia deliberately switches
> > the card off when the driver detects that it is virtualised.
> >
> > I am using the newest BIOS version (updated on Sunday) on the
> > motherboard: 
> > Supermicro C7Z170-M
> > BIOS Version: 2.0a
> > BIOS Tag: 1088B
> > Date: 07/17/2017
> > Time: 15:51:37
> >
> > Unfortunately I do not know anything about a bioy\uefi firmware
> > bug. Is this a known issue of my mainboard version?
> >
> > In the BIOS for the "Boot mode select" setting, I have chosen
> > "Legacy" (there would also be "UEFI" or "DUAL"). Do you think it
> > might be worth trying to change it to the other two?
> 
> I can't tell for sure if it will help. Basically, you have to enable
> VT-d, IOMMU in BIOS and stick with it.

I have enabled VT-d but could not find IOMMU in the BIOS.
But since:

> You can check if all features of QEMU are enabled on your host by
> typing: $ virt-host-validate

The command reports everything enabled.

virt-host-validate: https://pastebin.com/FUbNst11


> > I have uploaded dmesg output if it helps:
> > dmesg: https://pastebin.com/79Us7WMf
> >
> > In the Windows 7 guest, the reported IDs are:
> > VEN_ID: 10DE
> > DEV_ID: 1B06
> >
> > The driver version in the Windows 7 guest is:
> > 23.21.13.8813 (Date: 27.10.2017)
> >
> I'd try different versions of nVidia drivers, not only most recent one
> and perform clean install of the drivers.

Just to be sure: I do not need the drivers on the Debian host since the
GPU is passed through to the guest. I had clean installs of everything.
I will have to look at the weekend for an older driver and test it...


> > I have [...] postponed the purchase due to lack of patience.
>
> You can download and try Windows 10 for free and play with it for a
> 90-days trial period. Get the regular one, not LTSB.
> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise
> Might be your best bet to try KVM with Windows 10 guest without
> spending any money.

Thanks for the tip. I created a Windows 10 Enterprise AMD64 guest.
Unfortunately with the same result.


Some other thing I was thinking: I read on the Supermicro homepage that
the C7Z170-M supports 7th generation i7s (like my i7-7700K). But in the
printed manual it was written that it only supports 6th Generation i7.
But then I gues it would not even boot up, if the CPU was not
supported. And the following findings also say otherwise.


To test if the card is not dead, I have just removed the nouveau
blacklist, and the options vfio-pci ids=10de:1b06,10de:10ef
in /etc/modprobe.d/vfio.conf.
After a reboot, I then installed nvidia-detect, nvidia-driver, and
nvidia-xconfig, as well as task-xfce-desktop on the Debian 9 host.
But when I booted, the display of the NVidia card remained black (just
like previously in the Debian guests). It is still possible to
Alt+Ctrl+F1 into a different terminal.
Then I reset the BIOS setting to the defaults and booted again into the
original Debian 9 host's XFCE4. This time it worked. I am now running
unigine benchmark and it runs quite well.


Now I think I do not understand the basic concept of PCI passthrough
correctly.
I have added again the /etc/modprobe.d/vfio.conf option and rebooted.
The nouveau driver was already blacklisted by a softlink
to /etc/alternatives/glx--nvidia-blacklists-nouveau.conf.
Probably I have to remove the nvidia-driver again to be able to reserve
the card for KVM?
First I set the primary video card in the BIOS to the internal
graphics of the mainboard/CPU.
Then I have retried it with Windows 10. Still no luck.


Not sure what to try next.
Thanks again for your much appreciated help and time.


Best regards,
Ramon

Re: KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear Adam,

On Mon, 13 Nov 2017 22:49:02 +0100
Adam Cécile  wrote:

> Here is my notes/scripts when I did that to attach an nvidia card
> inside a KVM virtual machine:
> https://github.com/eLvErDe/nvidia-docker-cuda-kvm-with-passthru/blob/master/create-kvm-for-nvidia-docker.sh

I rembered that I can just upgrade to Stretch the usual way by changing
the sources.list files.
Unfortunately it is exactly the same as what I described in my prvious
email to Alexander. I could install and configure the driver but
startxfce4 does not start.

startxfce4: https://pastebin.com/0MeCU492

xorg.conf: https://pastebin.com/a4qGhsxz

Maybe I do not startxfce4 correctly?
Do I need to change xorg.conf?
Or is there any way to check if the driver works in the guest?


Thanks again for your help.


Best regards,
Ramon

Re: KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear Adam,

On Mon, 13 Nov 2017 22:49:02 +0100
Adam Cécile  wrote:

> Here is my notes/scripts when I did that to attach an nvidia card
> inside a KVM virtual machine:
> https://github.com/eLvErDe/nvidia-docker-cuda-kvm-with-passthru/blob/master/create-kvm-for-nvidia-docker.sh

Thank you very much for your script.

Since I am new to virtualisation and a bit a purist, I hoped to not use
docker or at least understand why I should use it.
Could you please tell a word or two about it?
Is it only because of the workaround you mention in the script?

With your script I have successfully created a VM and installed
nvidia-detect but it reports:
# nvidia-detect 
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
00:04.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation Device
[10de:1b06] (rev a1) Uh oh. Your card is not supported by any driver
version up to 340.102. A newer driver may add support for your card.
Newer driver releases may be available in backports, unstable or
experimental.

I hope to have time to do further tests tomorrow by changing your
script to use Debian 9 and its newer drivers.


Thanky again and best regards,
Ramon

Re: Re: KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear Alexander,

Thank you very much for your reply.

> > The system I am using:
> > lshw: https://pastebin.com/tB7FqqxN
> >
> > Host OS:Debian 9 Stretch
> > Mainboard: Supermicro C7Z170-M (activated VT-d in Bios)
> > CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
> > GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX1080 Ti
> >
> > The GPU is not listed because I have blacklisted it:
> > $ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
> > blacklist nouveau
> >
> > lspci: https://pastebin.com/6qYuJRPg
> >
> > I found this guide:
> > https://scottlinux.com/2016/08/28/gpu-passthrough-with-kvm-and-debian-linux/
> >
> > After installing Win7 guest, enabling PCI passthrough using
> > virt-manager, installing the NVidia driver in the guest, Windows
> > reports the error 43 for the GPU.
> > 
> > Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems.
> > (Code 43)
> >
> > This is described in the above mentioned post and a workaround is
> > linked:
> > https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/479xnx/guests_with_nvidia_gpus_can_enable_hyperv/
> >
> > Unfortunately I do not know how to apply the workaround. I
> > understand
> > that I should create a file '/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm-hv-vendor' with
> > the
> > following content:
> >
> > #!/bin/sh
> > exec /usr/bin/qemu-kvm \
> > `echo "\$@" | sed 's|hv_time|hv_time,hv_vendor_id=whatever|g'`
> >
> > Or according to the original redhat mailing list post by Alex
> > Williamson:
> > https://www.redhat.com/archives/vfio-users/2016-March/msg00092.html
> >
> > $ cat /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm-hv-vendor 
> > #!/bin/sh
> > exec /usr/bin/qemu-kvm \
> > `echo "\$@" | sed
> > 's|hv_time|hv_time,hv_vendor_id=KeenlyKVM|g'`
> >
> > But since there is no qemu-kvm present and the directory
> > '/usr/libexec' does not exist on my system, I wonder how I should
> > proceed.
> 
> This is interesting topic and I hope to find some time to spare to
> implement and test this setup on my system. Can't suggest you anything
> yet, because this "Code 43" error is generic and can happen even on
> normal systems. The reasons could be limitless from driver version
> conflict to bios\uefi firmware bug of your motherboard. I wonder, what
> VEN_ID and DEV_ID are reported for your VGA in Windows guest? Have you
> tried Windows 8.1 or 10 as guests? They could have more support for
> virtualization in general.

Interesting. I thought I was just not able to setup KVM / QEMU
properly. Because I read and heard that NVidia deliberately switches
the card off when the driver detects that it is virtualised.

I am using the newest BIOS version (updated on Sunday) on the
motherboard: 
Supermicro C7Z170-M
BIOS Version: 2.0a
BIOS Tag: 1088B
Date: 07/17/2017
Time: 15:51:37

Unfortunately I do not know anything about a bioy\uefi firmware bug. Is
this a known issue of my mainboard version?

In the BIOS for the "Boot mode select" setting, I have chosen
"Legacy" (there would also be "UEFI" or "DUAL"). Do you think it might
be worth trying to change it to the other two?

I have uploaded dmesg output if it helps:
dmesg: https://pastebin.com/79Us7WMf

In the Windows 7 guest, the reported IDs are:
VEN_ID: 10DE
DEV_ID: 1B06

The driver version in the Windows 7 guest is:
23.21.13.8813 (Date: 27.10.2017)

I have thought about buying a Windows 10 copy, but it is not possible
to get the direct download version in Switzerland, so I postponed the
purchase due to lack of patience.

But if it helps, here is the information from a Debian 9 guest with the
nvidia-driver package installed: 
ID: 10de:1b06
VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:1b06]
(rev a1)

This is also what nvidia-detect says:
$ sudo nvidia-detect 
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
00:09.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation Device
[10de:1b06] (rev a1)

Checking card:  NVIDIA Corporation Device 1b06 (rev a1)
Your card is supported by the default drivers.
It is recommended to install the
nvidia-driver
package.

So I installed nvidia-driver and rebooted the Debian 9 guest.
The display setting in XFCE4 still does not show the NVidia card and
the nvidia-setting program reports that I should run nvidia-xconfig as
root, which I did.
This is the resulting config file:
xorg.conf: https://pastebin.com/sCe30emi

Unfortunately lightdm fails to start. Here is the suggested log:
systemctl status lightdm.service: https://pastebin.com/VYgKuCy1

Since there is not much information in that log I have created a
pastebin for dmesg of the failed Debian 9 guest boot attempt:
dmesg for lightdm fail: https://pastebin.com/Djx2YycH


I am not sure if I can still get a copy of Windows 8 somewhere, but if
you think it helps, I can go an buy Windows 10.
Please let me know how I can help you helping me :-)

The problem got me thinking yesterday and today I asked around if
anybody wants the card and if I should buy an AMD GPU. But since my
card came with a pre-installed water block no potential buyer could be
found...


Thank you again and best regards,
Ramon

KVM PCI Passthrough NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti error code 43

[Ramon Hofer]

Dear all,

Please help me passthrough my GPU the a KVM guest.

The system I am using:
lshw: https://pastebin.com/tB7FqqxN

Host OS:Debian 9 Stretch
Mainboard: Supermicro C7Z170-M (activated VT-d in Bios)
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX1080 Ti

The GPU is not listed because I have blacklisted it:
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
blacklist nouveau

lspci: https://pastebin.com/6qYuJRPg

I found this guide:
https://scottlinux.com/2016/08/28/gpu-passthrough-with-kvm-and-debian-linux/

After installing Win7 guest, enabling PCI passthrough using
virt-manager, installing the NVidia driver in the guest, Windows reports
the error 43 for the GPU.

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems.
(Code 43)

This is described in the above mentioned post and a workaround is
linked:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/479xnx/guests_with_nvidia_gpus_can_enable_hyperv/

Unfortunately I do not know how to apply the workaround. I understand
that I should create a file '/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm-hv-vendor' with the
following content:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/qemu-kvm \
`echo "\$@" | sed 's|hv_time|hv_time,hv_vendor_id=whatever|g'`

Or according to the original redhat mailing list post by Alex
Williamson:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/vfio-users/2016-March/msg00092.html

$ cat /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm-hv-vendor 
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/qemu-kvm \
`echo "\$@" | sed 's|hv_time|hv_time,hv_vendor_id=KeenlyKVM|g'`

But since there is no qemu-kvm present and the directory '/usr/libexec'
does not exist on my system, I wonder how I should proceed.

Any help fixing my problem would be highly appreciated.


Thanky you very much in advance and best regards,
Ramon

nvidia-driver in Sid

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I am using sid and after dist-upgrading today I can not start X anymore:

# apt-get update  
Hit:1 http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian sid InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
xbmc@hoferr-htpc:~$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree   
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-driver : Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 367.57-2) but it
is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have
held broken packages.


# apt-get install nvidia-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree   
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-driver : Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 367.57-2) but it
is not going to be installed


# apt-get install nvidia-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree   
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-driver : Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 367.57-2) but it
is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have
held broken packages. xbmc@hoferr-htpc:~$ sudo apt-get install
xserver-xorg-video-nvidia Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree   
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 xserver-xorg-video-nvidia : Depends: xorg-video-abi-20 but it is not
installable or xorg-video-abi-19 but it is not installable or
  xorg-video-abi-18 but it is not
installable or xorg-video-abi-15 but it is not installable or
  xorg-video-abi-14 but it is not
installable or xorg-video-abi-13 but it is not installable or
  xorg-video-abi-12 but it is not
installable or xorg-video-abi-11 but it is not installable or
  xorg-video-abi-10 but it is not
installable or xorg-video-abi-8 but it is not installable or
  xorg-video-abi-6.0 but it is not
installable Depends: xserver-xorg-core (< 2:1.18.99) but 2:1.19.0-2 is
to be installed Recommends: nvidia-driver (>= 367.57) but it is not
going to be installed



$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free


Is there anything I can do to rsolve the dependencies?


Thanks and regards,
Ramon

Debian Jessie Postgres 9.4 connection problem

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I am trying to setup a postgresql 9.4 database on Debian Jessie. It
worked well on testing with postgresql 9.6 from the repos and then I
already could connect with
$ sudo -u postgres psql

I would like to use Jessie but when I try the same on stable with
postgresql 9.4, this is what I get when I try to connect to the
database:

$ sudo -u postgres psql
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket
"/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

The service is started:

$ sudo service postgresql status
● postgresql.service - PostgreSQL RDBMS
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/postgresql.service; enabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Thu 2016-12-01 00:03:34 CET; 7min ago
 Main PID: 24644 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Dec 01 00:03:34 sru-ac-data systemd[1]: Started PostgreSQL RDBMS.
Dec 01 00:03:34 sru-ac-data systemd[1]: Started PostgreSQL RDBMS.


Do you know of any problems?
And what I could do to make it work?


Thanks for your answer!


Best regards,
Ramon

Sync Orage and Android (via calendarserver?)

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I'm using Orage calendar on my Desktop. I have an Android tablet which 
I'd like to keep in sync with Orage. My desktop machine doesn't run all 
the time but I have a home server which does.

Therefore I'd like to put the shared calendar data on the server so that 
both the desktop and the tablet can get the data from there.

I have tried calendarserver but I couldn't connect Orage to it.

What do you use to keep your calendars in sync?

I'm not a big fan of putting my data to Google. That's why I'd like to 
find a solution where the data stays on my own devices.

Thanks for your suggestions.


Best
Ramon


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Re: ivtv driver in Wheezy 3.2.0-4-amd64

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 20:09:11 +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:

 On 2013-01-05 19:10 +0100, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 When I try to load it I get

 # modprobe ivtv libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:174
 kmod_module_parse_depline:
 ctx=0x7fc95a92e010
 path=/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/media/ i2c/tveeprom.ko
 error=No such file or directory
 
 This file really ought to be there, as it is part of the
 linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64 package.  How it got lost is hard to know, but
 reinstalling the package should fix that.

Thanks for that! After a
# apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64
and a reboot the driver was loaded and the card works again :-)


 I used reportbug to file the bug. But I haven't received an ack until
 now (sent it about 5 mins ago).
 
 Yes, it often takes a bit longer than that.

I think reportbug has a problem sending mails from my server. Still 
there's no mail in my inbox.
But since it was no bug everything is fine :-)


Thanks again
Ramon


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ivtv driver in Wheezy 3.2.0-4-amd64

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I have updated my media server to Wheezy and added a new TV capture card.
The one I'm using for some time now is an analogue Hauppauge PVR-500 and 
I added a DigitalDevices Cine C/T with  DuoFlex C/T a quad DVB-C capture 
card some days ago.

With the old kernel:

$ uname -a
Linux media-server 3.2.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Jul 23 02:45:17 UTC 2012 
x86_64 GNU/Linux

I have the following devices for the PVR-500:

$ ls /dev/video*
/dev/video0  /dev/video24  /dev/video32
/dev/video1  /dev/video25  /dev/video33

This is the dmesg for the old kernel:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=7FD5uX9A


With the new kernel:

$ uname -a
Linux media-server 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.35-2 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I have no video devices:

$ ls /dev/video*
ls: cannot access /dev/video*: No such file or directory

And this is the dmesg for the new kernel:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ftBVUdL8


I use MythTV as the backend to record programs. When I wanted to add the 
new DVB card I saw that the old analogue card wasn't found anymore. I 
thought maybe I have forgotten to install the ivtv drivers or firmware 
when I updated to Wheezy so I installed the ivtv-utils and firmware-ivtv 
packages but this doesn't bring back the /dev/video*


Is this a known problem and should I just wait for 3.2.0-5 or can I do 
something?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: how to buy an ideal laptop RAM module?

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi war_dhan

What brand and type is your laptop?


On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:58:03 +0530, vishnu vardhan wrote:

 questions:
 without opening the laptop where can i find info about number of pins 
 voltage capacity of my memory module ? [ i am scared to open laptop ].

Usually there's a cover to access the modules easily.
With the type name of your laptop you should be able to find what kind of 
ram module you need. How many pins, ddr? and frequency...

I'm far from an expert but Wikipedia helps here:

 is Error Correction Type is also known as ECC ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory


 if my present ram type is sodimm, should i purchase only sodimm or dimm
 ?

Yes you should.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SO-DIMM


 some memory modules contain SDRAM in item details, what is the
 realtionship of SDRAM with ram ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDRAM


Hope this helps a little.


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: ivtv driver in Wheezy 3.2.0-4-amd64

[Ramon Hofer]

Thanks for your answer, Sven!

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:02:33 +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:

 The obvious difference to the dmesg with the old kernel is that there
 are no messages from the ivtv module.  Is that module loaded?  If not,
 what happens if you modprobe it manually?

The module isn't loaded.

With the older kernel I get:

$ lsmod | grep ivtv
ivtv  128970  0 
cx2341x21461  1 ivtv
v4l2_common13222  5 cx2341x,ivtv,cx25840,tuner,wm8775
videodev   70889  6 
cx2341x,v4l2_common,ivtv,cx25840,tuner,wm8775
tveeprom   20593  1 ivtv
i2c_algo_bit   12841  2 ivtv,radeon
i2c_core   23876  17 
i2c_i801,ddbridge,i2c_algo_bit,tveeprom,drm,drm_kms_helper,videodev,
v4l2_common,ivtv,radeon,tea5767,cx25840,tuner,tda8290,tda9887,wm8775,
tuner_simple

But with the newer the same command returns nothing.

When I try to load it I get

# modprobe ivtv
libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:174 kmod_module_parse_depline: 
ctx=0x7fc95a92e010 path=/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/media/
i2c/tveeprom.ko error=No such file or directory
libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:174 kmod_module_parse_depline: 
ctx=0x7fc95a92e010 path=/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/media/
i2c/tveeprom.ko error=No such file or directory
ERROR: could not insert 'ivtv': Unknown symbol in module, or unknown 
parameter (see dmesg)

dmesg contains:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=T6CCMV7z


 Is this a known problem and should I just wait for 3.2.0-5 or can I do
 something?
 
 I don't think it is known, consider filing a bug (use reportbug for
 that).  BTW, the -3 and -4 are _not_ package versions, they rather
 indicate the ABI of the kernel (version would be 3.2.35-2 for the -4
 kernel, the -3 kernel did not include that information in the uname
 output).

Thanks for the explanations about the kernel versions.

I used reportbug to file the bug. But I haven't received an ack until now 
(sent it about 5 mins ago).
I will post the link and number here when I got it...


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Optimal Storage Server

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 2012-07-23 at 04:52 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 On 7/22/2012 10:17 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
  But if you multiply the price of five Netgear NV+ (which each holds four
  disks) ~ CHF 300.-- each then this isn't what I'd call cheap.
 
 And even if your self built (take lots of pride in that achievement BTW)
 Norco solution is slightly more expensive, you have a large number of
 advantages, not least of which is increased performance.  You can also
 have all your files under one share/mapping where that would be 5 shares
 using the ready made NAS boxen.  And you intentionally built it leaving
 some performance on the table, for increased flexibility WRT expansion
 with one filesystem tree.
 
 You're getting ~60MB/s server  laptop now (which is pretty nice for a
 laptop mechanical drive).  Drop an SSD into the laptop and you should be
 seeing closer to 90-100MB/s, assuming you're cabled with GbE and the
 NICs on both ends are decent.
 
  And with the speed and possibilities it gives me I consider my solution
  better than what I could get from a ready to use NAS.
 
 Amen. ;)
 
 Just imagine what it would do if you started from scratch with 20 of the
 Black drives in md/RAID6 w/a 32K chunk, and XFS tuned to the stripe.
 You'd easily hit 1GB/s streaming reads, with streaming writes probably
 500MB/s.  Depends on your CPU.  I forgot which one is in the Asus board.

You're absolutely right what the pride concerns :-)
And as well the cost. But I could use the old mobo, CPU (i3 550) so this
looks a bit better for the Norco solution.

Btw: I'm still waiting for this damping mats :-/
Can only take some more weeks...


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 2012-07-23 at 11:34 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 06:31:48PM +0200, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sam, 2012-07-21 at 22:18 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
   On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 11:54:58AM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
   
Is there another one which I can use to set specific mounts?
Like in my case the config dir in my home for sabnzbd?
   
   Not provided with the package.  You could just
 sudo cp -r /etc/schroot/default /etc/schroot/sabnzbd
   and then set
 script-config=/etc/schroot/sabnzdb/config
   (you'll need to edit this file to update the paths in it from
   /etc/schroot/default to /etc/schroot/sabnzdb.
  
  This has made me want to have a separate sid schroot for sabnzbd :-)
  
  That's why I renamed /srv/chroot/sid to /srv/chroot/sid-sab and the
  session name in /etc/schroot/schroot.conf to sid-sab too:
 
 This is one place where schroot's support for cloned sessions may be
 useful; if you use e.g. type=file|lvm-snapshot|btrfs-snapshot, you
 can clone a session just for sab, and then make others for other
 purposes, without having to physically copy the base chroot.  For
 a long-term persistent one I'd recommend file for simplicity (it
 just unpacks a tarball of your chroot), or btrfs-snapshot if you
 already use btrfs.
 
 They will all share the same profile though; though in 1.6.x you
 can configure schroot to allow these to be overridden on a per-
 session basis.

I could use the init.d script to change the binds...

And thanks for the suggestions. I have some material to read (and
decide).


  Because in my init.d script now both --session-name and --chroot are
  sid-sab I feared that this would lead to problems. But doesn't seem to.
  Is this true?
 
 No.  chroot names and session names are in separate namespaces, so
 it's allowed.  They are actually named chroot:sid-sab and
 session:sid-sab (run schroot -l).  At least for the version of
 schroot in wheezy and sid; it might not be exposed in the squeeze
 version.

So far it seems to work find :-)


   Did you run with -u root to switch to the root user inside the
   chroot?  If you don't use -u it will just run as the current
   user, rather than switching.  So long as one of the groups you
   are a member of is in root-groups or root-users, you'll be
   allowed to switch without a password.  If you aren't in one of those,
   you'll be prompted for a password IIRC.
  
  Aha, I thought my user would have the right to directly run commands
  like apt-get without sudo.
 
 Not sure what you mean here.
   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
 is the same as
   schroot -c $chroot -u root -- apt-get dist-upgrade
 You just don't get the switch to root as the default behaviour.
 You can certainly run commands as root directly.

I thought I could run
  schroot -c $schroot -- apt-get dist-upgrade

But now I now that I have to do one of the following
  sudo schroot -c $schroot -- apt-get dist-upgrade
  schroot -c $schroot -u root -- apt-get dist-upgrade
  ...


  But still when I run `sudo -u root` I get
sudo: effective uid is not 0, is sudo installed setuid root?
 
 This is /inside/ the chroot?

Yes.


  I read that this could be because the filesystem is mounted with
  'nosuid' [1]. But this isn't the case. Here's my fstab for this schroot:
 
 I've never seen this.  It's almost certainly due to the specific
 filesystems or setup you have.  Check if it's really set setuid root.

I use ext4 for the /srv filesystem. And when I run ls -l for the schroot
directories (like `ls -l /srv/chroot/sid` or inside the schroot `ls
-l /`) the UID are root.

I haven't set the root password outside or inside so far.

But this is not so important atm. Maybe sometimes I'll find a
solution...
Or I'll just recreate the sid schroot if it'll bother me.


  I read that chroot doesn't create any overhead except disk space. So
  there's no drawback on using separate schroot environments for different
  daemons except the extra disk space?
 
 Not really.  And if you use e.g. btrfs snapshots, you avoid even
 the space overhead.

This sounds interesting. I'll learn more about this when I'll find
time :-)


  E.g. the python libraries are only loaded once for each sid session I
  run? No matter if python is installed in /srv/chroot/sid-sab and as well
  in a new /srv/chroot/sid-mythbackend?
 
 No, they'll be separate files in this case, and hence loaded twice.
 But if you use LVM or Btrfs snapshots they would be the same physical
 disc blocks; and in the case of Btrfs the same file (AFAICK).

This really sounds great.
Thanks for the suggestion :-)


  And does it make sense to use different partitions for each chroot
  environment: Should I put /srv/chroot/sid-sab to an own partition?
  Atm I have a ~300 GB partition mounted to /srv. The /srv/chroot/sid-sab
  directory uses 466 MB so I could create a 5 GB partition for it?
 
 That would be fine.  Personally, I have each chroot on a btrfs
 subvolume, that way there's no restrictions on how much each may

Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 2012-07-23 at 10:25 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 05:27:14PM +0200, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Son, 2012-07-22 at 15:58 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
   On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 03:25:49PM +0200, Ramon Hofer wrote:
On Sam, 2012-07-21 at 22:05 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 I would also check the return status of schroot.  If sid-sab
 already exists, then session creation will fail, and you'll
 reuse the old session.  That might not be incorrect, but
 in the general case, I'd recommend checking.

I was thinking about this too. But I saw no need to create a new session
if the old is still there.
What could be drawbacks of doing so?
   
   None really; they can even persist across reboots.  (That's what
   the recover-session action is for.)
  
  Hmm, then maybe I should check if there'are lost sessions upon the start
  of the script?
  Or will either schroot -b or -r work with such a lost session?
 
 By default, the schroot init script will automatically recover any
 sessions at boot (see /etc/default/schroot).  So you shouldn't have
 to worry about that.  It's basically just running the setup scripts
 again to ensure that all filesystems are mounted, etc.

Ok, great!

I now changed the stop function to (added the if test) to get rid of
error messages when running `sid-sabnzbdplus stop` twice:
  stop_sab() {
if [ -f /var/lib/schroot/session/sid-sab ]; then
  schroot -rq -c $NAME /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus stop
  schroot -eq -c $NAME
else
  echo SABnzbd+ not running, not stooped 21
fi
  }

Or is there a better way to test if a session is still available?
`schroot -l -c $NAME` didn't work because it returns the same error
message as e.q. `schroot -eq -c $NAME` when the session isn't running
anymore.


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 2012-07-23 at 19:15 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 06:27:22PM +0200, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  I now changed the stop function to (added the if test) to get rid of
  error messages when running `sid-sabnzbdplus stop` twice:
stop_sab() {
  if [ -f /var/lib/schroot/session/sid-sab ]; then
schroot -rq -c $NAME /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus stop
schroot -eq -c $NAME
  else
echo SABnzbd+ not running, not stooped 21
  fi
}
  
  Or is there a better way to test if a session is still available?
  `schroot -l -c $NAME` didn't work because it returns the same error
  message as e.q. `schroot -eq -c $NAME` when the session isn't running
  anymore.
 
 That certainly works, but might break with future schroot versions,
 since that directory is an implementation detail.  You can do
 
 schroot -l --all-sessions
 == session:sid-sbuild-28666af7-3e88-42cd-a83c-16267088d3f6
 
 Note that this is also version-specific since only newer versions
 add the session: namespace.

Thanks alot for your help!

Now I'm testing with
  [ $(schroot -l --all-sessions) = session:sid-sab ]
and hope that the output of future versions won't change 8-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Optimal Storage Server

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:05:45 -0400, Shaffin Bhanji wrote:

 I am thinking of the Norco 16/20 hotswap and a 2x operton QC CPU m/b but
 wasnt sure what a solid performing m/b would be that will work well with
 the LSI? Any thoughts?
 
 Thanks my hands are now itching for this project to be completed :-)

A: Because it messes up the way you read
Q: Why is top-posting bad?
A: Writing your answer before the question
Q: What is top-posting? 

http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser#What_is_top-
posting_.28and_why_shouldn.27t_I_do_it.29.3F

;-)

I have an Asus P7P55D mobo with a i3 550 CPU and 8 GB of RAM. For me this 
is plenty and the mdadm doesn't challenge the CPU or fills the RAM.

Probably Stan can tell you more but of course it depends a lot on what 
you plan to do with your system.


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sam, 2012-07-21 at 22:05 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 04:52:24PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 11:54:58 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  
   I found what I did wrong: In the init.d script I used chroot instead of
   schroot:
   http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Lamy4K4a
   
   Could you please help me with the correct command?
   Instead of `chroot /srv/chroot/sid /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus start` can I
   use `schroot -c sid sabnzbdplus start`?
   
   Then this would be my new schroot script:
   http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Lamy4K4a
  
  I have made some changes to my script: 
  http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=VFr77mwK
  
  There's some mess with the output of the commands. So it's not really 
  nice but it's working.
  
  I've tried to use the -q option for schroot but it's still talking...
 
 Firstly, add schroot to Required-(Start|Stop), since you do
 need it to be set up prior to starting new sessions.

Thanks for the hint!
I added $schroot at the end (don't know if the ordering matters...)


 I would also check the return status of schroot.  If sid-sab
 already exists, then session creation will fail, and you'll
 reuse the old session.  That might not be incorrect, but
 in the general case, I'd recommend checking.

I was thinking about this too. But I saw no need to create a new session
if the old is still there.
What could be drawbacks of doing so?


 What talking are you seeing?  --quiet should hide all the
 messages, unless there's a problem.

I was wrong there. The only output I see is from 
schroot -bq -n $NAME -c $SCHROOT

It returns $NAME. But I've already changed to sabnzbdplus init script
from the sid schroot to output something like
[ ok ] Starting SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber in sid chroot:.

I have tried this
$NAME=$(schroot -bq -n $NAME -c $SCHROOT)

But when the init.d script is called the second time with start then it
return
E: /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus: Chroot not found

That's why I have added /dev/null to the creation command
schroot -bq -n $NAME -c $SCHROOT /dev/null

Now everything seems to run as expected. Except maybe the re-usage of an
old schroot session?


Cheers
Ramon




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Re: Optimal Storage Server

[Ramon Hofer]

On Son, 2012-07-22 at 10:34 -0400, Shaffin Bhanji wrote:
 Hello Ramon,
 
 Thanks, and how much did the server cost you?


Please don't top post, Sam.

It cost me the case €387.94, the LSI hba CHF 281.45, the Intel SAS
expander CHF 110.25 and four new WD black 2TB drives 4x CHF 190.65. Plus
some cables and fans.

But if you multiply the price of five Netgear NV+ (which each holds four
disks) ~ CHF 300.-- each then this isn't what I'd call cheap.
And with the speed and possibilities it gives me I consider my solution
better than what I could get from a ready to use NAS.


Cheers
Ramon



 On 22/07/2012 8:49 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 07:41:32 -0400, Shaffin Bhanji wrote:
 
  I am trying to put together a 2U storage server for data. I have
  previously invested in NAS equipment such as the Netgear NAS 1100 that I
  have been disappointed in to say the least - data write speed of 5MB/s.
 
  This time around I want to build something that I have control over
  hardware than to rely on equipment that I am locked in with, and not to
  mention limitations.
 
  I would like an opinion from this group on successful implementation as
  I will highly be using the server for vitalization disks (iSCSI),
  backup, file share, etc. I want to make sure that I chose the right
  hardware to get the best read/write performance.
  Hi Sam
 
  I was at the same point some months ago. I had a Netgear NV+ and even
  lower data rates (read and write not even 2 MB/s). I didn't want to fill
  the case up but I wanted to have the possibility to expand it later.
 
  What I did is was to go for a Norco 19 4U case [1].
  Of course Norco has as well 2U cases [2].
 
  With the help of this list (especially Stan) I went for a MegaRAID SAS
  9240 controller and an Inter SAS expander. I had serious problems getting
  it working with a Supermicro C7P67 mainboard. But in an Asus P7P55D it
  works like a charm. I use the hba in jbod mode and let mdadm do the raid
  stuff.
 
  When I copied my old data (from 4 disks in RAID5 attached directly to
  mobo) to the new hardware (to 4 disks attached to the Intel expander and
  the LSI hba) I had data speed measured with rsync of more than 150 MB/s.
  When I now copy things I have data rates of about 60 MB/s. This is read
  and write to the disk over ethernet and from a 2.5 laptop drive to the
  raid inside the server again measured with rsync.
 
  Hope this helps a little.
 
 
  Best regards
  Ramon
 
 
 
  [1] http://cybershop.ri-vier.nl/4u-rackmnt-server-case-w20-hotswap-
  satasas-drv-bays-rpc4020-p-17.html
  [2] http://cybershop.ri-vier.nl/19-inch-rack-mount-2u-rack-mount-case-
  c-1_3_5.html?zenid=3f7d9a26cb57676b810105b2621b6c13
 
 
 



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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Son, 2012-07-22 at 15:58 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 03:25:49PM +0200, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sam, 2012-07-21 at 22:05 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
   
   Firstly, add schroot to Required-(Start|Stop), since you do
   need it to be set up prior to starting new sessions.
  
  Thanks for the hint!
  I added $schroot at the end (don't know if the ordering matters...)
 
 It's schroot, not $schroot.  '$' means it's a virtual
 service provided by another script; without the '$' means the
 script itself.  e.g. $network is provided by ifupdown.

Thanks for the explanation :-)


   I would also check the return status of schroot.  If sid-sab
   already exists, then session creation will fail, and you'll
   reuse the old session.  That might not be incorrect, but
   in the general case, I'd recommend checking.
  
  I was thinking about this too. But I saw no need to create a new session
  if the old is still there.
  What could be drawbacks of doing so?
 
 None really; they can even persist across reboots.  (That's what
 the recover-session action is for.)

Hmm, then maybe I should check if there'are lost sessions upon the start
of the script?
Or will either schroot -b or -r work with such a lost session?


   What talking are you seeing?  --quiet should hide all the
   messages, unless there's a problem.
  
  I have tried this
  $NAME=$(schroot -bq -n $NAME -c $SCHROOT)
  
  But when the init.d script is called the second time with start then it
  return
  E: /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus: Chroot not found
  
  That's why I have added /dev/null to the creation command
  schroot -bq -n $NAME -c $SCHROOT /dev/null
 
 /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus is an odd name for a chroot; It's not
 even valid to have '/' in the name IIRC.  Is $NAME correct here?

Yes but this error was printed when I had these two commands in the
start part of my init.d script:

  $NAME=$(schroot -bq -n $NAME -c $SCHROOT)
  schroot -rq -c $NAME /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus start

NAME is set to  after the first command and /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus
is therefore the argument for -c in the second command.


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sam, 2012-07-21 at 22:18 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 11:54:58AM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:32:14 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
  
   On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 12:48:49PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
   On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:42:58 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
   
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:34:26PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
I have some questions about starting daemons in a chroot environment
or rather about starting schroot on bootup.
The reason I want to do this is to clean up my server. It's a
Squeeze with an AMD64 kernel from backports. Some packages are from
testing which gives me problems because of dependencies that can't
be fullfilled: sabnzbdplus from testing depends on python so I can't
install build- essential...

So far I was able to setup a chroot with schroot and installed sid
in it.

[sid]
description=Debian sid (unstable)
directory=/srv/chroot/sid users=hoferr groups=hoferr
root-groups=root aliases=unstable,default

set type=directory here
   
   That sounds great what I can read in the schroot.conf manpage:
   In consequence, filesystems  such  as  /proc  are  not  mounted  in
   plain chroots;  it  is  the  responsibility  of  the  system
   administrator to configure  such  chroots  by  hand,  whereas directory
 chroots   are automatically  configured.
   
   This means I can remove the remounts of /proc, /dev and /sys to /srv/
   chroot/sid/... from my /etc/fstab?
   
   Yes, exactly.  You still have an fstab--it's /etc/schroot/default/fstab,
   though this is configurable (set script=config with schroot 1.4.x, or
   profile= with schroot 1.6.x).
  
  Very nice!
  This is the default fstab which is used for all schroots right?
 
 Yes.
 
  Is there another one which I can use to set specific mounts?
  Like in my case the config dir in my home for sabnzbd?
 
 Not provided with the package.  You could just
   sudo cp -r /etc/schroot/default /etc/schroot/sabnzbd
 and then set
   script-config=/etc/schroot/sabnzdb/config
 (you'll need to edit this file to update the paths in it from
 /etc/schroot/default to /etc/schroot/sabnzdb.

This has made me want to have a separate sid schroot for sabnzbd :-)

That's why I renamed /srv/chroot/sid to /srv/chroot/sid-sab and the
session name in /etc/schroot/schroot.conf to sid-sab too:

  [sid-sab]
  type=directory
  description=Debian sid (unstable) for SABnzbd
  directory=/srv/chroot/sid-sab
  users=hoferr
  groups=hoferr
  root-groups=root,hoferr
  script-config=/etc/schroot/sid-sab/config

After copying /etc/schroot/default to /etc/schroot/sid-sab I have
manually edited the three paths in /etc/schroot/sabnzdb/config:

  FSTAB=/etc/schroot/sid-sab/fstab
  COPYFILES=/etc/schroot/sid-sab/copyfiles
  NSSDATABASES=/etc/schroot/sid-sab/nssdatabases

Unfortunately when I started the schroot session I got
  $ schroot -v -p -c sid-sab
  I: Executing ‘00check setup-start ok’
  E: 00check: error: script-config file
'/etc/schroot/etc/schroot/sid-sab/config' does not exist
  ...

That's why I changed script-config to
  script-config=sid-sab/config

Now it's working. :-)

Because in my init.d script now both --session-name and --chroot are
sid-sab I feared that this would lead to problems. But doesn't seem to.
Is this true?



  And I should copy/bind another config file. Is it possible to have 
  different /etc/schroot/default/copyfiles for different schroot 
  environments?
 
  Something like /etc/schroot/[SCHROOT]/fstab and /etc/schroot/[SCHROOT]/
  copyfiles would be very handy :-)
 
 Not using the same /etc/schroot/default/copyfiles file, but by
 creating your own chroot-specific config directory as above, it's
 definitely possible.  See the other options like
 /etc/schroot/desktop for pre-canned profiles provided as
 alternatives to default.

That's great! Thanks :-)
I will in the next weeks probably play a lot with it ;-)
Not only desktop/config but maybe also sbuild/config. I always wanted to
learn about building my own package :-)


In the chroot I have created a new user called hoferr and am now
able to login without root privilieges.
But in there sudo is missing. Maybe this can be resolved by
installing the correct base system meta package mentioned above?

You could install sudo.  But why?  This is what schroot /is/ (chroot
+
sudo).  If you want to do stuff as root inside the chroot,
just add yourself to root-groups/root-users.
   
   Or start it with `sudo schroot -p -c sid`.
   
   That's a possibility, though I would personally just configure schroot
   to give me root access directly.
  
  I have tried to set root-groups=root,sudo in /etc/schroot/schroot.conf 
  for the (only)  but this doesn't give me root access (even though I'm 
  member of the sudo group outside the chroot and inside it as it seems 
  the /etc/group files are the same).
  
  I've also tried to add my user directly to the root-groups

Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:24:11 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:

 First I should say that schroot appears to have a lot more functionality
 than I previously realized.  I had thought it was just a fancy suid
 chroot similar to 'dchroot' adding a security layer around chroot(2). 
 But it looks like it can do much more including building chroots on the
 fly and other really fancy things.  I know nothing about that yet and
 will need to read up on it.  But having said that I will answer some of
 your questions anyway even if perhaps the answer isn't relevant anymore
 in light of that.

I haven't used schroot or chroot before. So you're advice is helpful for 
sure :-)


 Ramon Hofer wrote:
 The program I'd like to jail is a daemon which means I should use the
 longer script. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything about the
 initscript ID in the policy-rc.d documentation.
 
 The ID is simply the name of the init.d script.  For nullmailer it is
 nullmailer.  For cron it is cron.  And so forth.

It looked to me as if I should have to adapt the ID there manually.


 The problem that policy-rc.d solves is that a package upgrade in the
 chroot would normally restart the associated daemon.  For some things
 such as nullmailer expected to be run from the chroot that is okay.
 But for other things it is generally undesirable.  For example I would
 definitely not want to run the 'ntp' daemon within the chroot.  I also
 don't want a networking upgrade in the chroot to try to stop and restart
 networking.  Lots of bad things that should not happen.

Thanks for the explanation!


 Btw I had to set the password for my user inside the chroot to be able
 to use sudo.
 
 Yes, of course.  Why does this surprise you?  Building a chroot is
 almost the same as building a competely different machine.  If you
 bought a new machine at the store, brought it home, installed an
 operating system onto it, would you be surprised that you would need to
 set up an account for you there?  Of course not.  Well, this is the same
 thing.  No difference.  If you want it in the chroot then you need to
 install it or set it up or whatever.  If you build an additional chroot
 then that is again a completely unique and separate installation.  If
 you want something there then you need to install it there.
 
 I frequently share things such as 'bind' mounting my /home directory so
 that I have one home directory.  For a very large install I might have
 many directories bind mounted.  For example:
 
   /home /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/home none bind 0 0 /tmp 
   /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/tmp  none bind 0 0 /proc
   /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/proc none bind 0 0 /dev 
   /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/dev  none bind 0 0 /dev/shm 
   /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/dev/shm  none bind 0 0 /dev/pts 
   /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/dev/pts  none bind 0 0 /var/run 
   /srv/chroot/sid-chromium/var/run  none bind 0 0
 
 In order to run the Unstable Sid Chromium on Stable Squeeze it wanted
 all of the extras mounted and available.  And then to run chromium from
 it I launch it like this:
 
 My local /usr/local/bin/chromium file:
 
   #!/bin/sh exec schroot -q -c sid -p -- chromium $@

That's really cool too.
I will probably be using something like this in the near future :-)


 Yes.  You can run tasksel in test mode with 'tasksel -t' and see the
 command it will run in each case.

Thanks!

In the installer there's an option which I can't see when I run taskesel -
t. In the installer it's called something like base system packages.

It's not important as I won't need it...


 I think I'll try with the minimal installation as well and when I run
 into serious problems I might install the rest with tasksel. It makes
 to not install too much because I won't work in the chroot. So probably
 even sudo and bash-completion are too much...
 
 I do often work in the chroot.  For example I use it for web development
 work in Rails.  So for me having basics such as emacs, less,
 bash-completion, and others are nice.
 
 I don't see much use for sudo.  I would normally use sudo outside the
 chroot to become root in the chroot.  Any of these.  All about the same:
 
   $ sudo chroot /srv/chroot/sid /bin/bash
 
   $ sudo chroot /srv/chroot/sid su -
 
   $ sudo schroot -c sid

I don't know what web development work in Rails but I want to build 
xbmc 
and openelec for some other system and maybe this could be a way to do 
it :-)


 As far as I know schroot doesn't start a VM or a Linux container or
 anything super fancy such as those.  I had always thought of it as a
 security layer on top of chroot.  I will have to read up on its fancy
 features.
 
 But the part I was talking about was simply the chroot(2) part.
 Perhaps you should read the man page for chroot to see the basic
 concepts.
 
   man 2 chroot
 
 It simply affects the path of / to be the specified one.  This is
 inherited by all children processes.

I knew that it changes the root directory. But I couldn't imagine

Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:32:14 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:

 On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 12:48:49PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:42:58 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
 
  On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:34:26PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  I have some questions about starting daemons in a chroot environment
  or rather about starting schroot on bootup.
  The reason I want to do this is to clean up my server. It's a
  Squeeze with an AMD64 kernel from backports. Some packages are from
  testing which gives me problems because of dependencies that can't
  be fullfilled: sabnzbdplus from testing depends on python so I can't
  install build- essential...
  
  So far I was able to setup a chroot with schroot and installed sid
  in it.
  
  [sid]
  description=Debian sid (unstable)
  directory=/srv/chroot/sid users=hoferr groups=hoferr
  root-groups=root aliases=unstable,default
  
  set type=directory here
 
 That sounds great what I can read in the schroot.conf manpage:
 In consequence, filesystems  such  as  /proc  are  not  mounted  in
 plain chroots;  it  is  the  responsibility  of  the  system
 administrator to configure  such  chroots  by  hand,  whereas directory
   chroots   are automatically  configured.
 
 This means I can remove the remounts of /proc, /dev and /sys to /srv/
 chroot/sid/... from my /etc/fstab?
 
 Yes, exactly.  You still have an fstab--it's /etc/schroot/default/fstab,
 though this is configurable (set script=config with schroot 1.4.x, or
 profile= with schroot 1.6.x).

Very nice!
This is the default fstab which is used for all schroots right?

Is there another one which I can use to set specific mounts?
Like in my case the config dir in my home for sabnzbd?

And I should copy/bind another config file. Is it possible to have 
different /etc/schroot/default/copyfiles for different schroot 
environments?

Something like /etc/schroot/[SCHROOT]/fstab and /etc/schroot/[SCHROOT]/
copyfiles would be very handy :-)


 But when I try this out and comment the proc and dev remounts and
 restart the system sabnzbd+ isn't started automatically and when I try
 it when the init.d script manually I get:
 [] Starting SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber:start-stop-daemon: nothing
 in /proc - not mounted?
  failed!
 
 Hmm, it should have mounted it.  Try looking at the information reported
 with -v; you should see the 10mount script mount mounting the
 filesystems.  If it doesn't, you should see an error at this point.
 Or, if the configuration is broken for some reason, maybe you'll see an
 absence of mounting.  You should see the reverse happen when you end the
 session as well.

I found what I did wrong: In the init.d script I used chroot instead of 
schroot:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Lamy4K4a

Could you please help me with the correct command?
Instead of `chroot /srv/chroot/sid /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus start` can I 
use `schroot -c sid sabnzbdplus start`?

Then this would be my new schroot script:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Lamy4K4a


  In the chroot I have created a new user called hoferr and am now
  able to login without root privilieges.
  But in there sudo is missing. Maybe this can be resolved by
  installing the correct base system meta package mentioned above?
  
  You could install sudo.  But why?  This is what schroot /is/ (chroot
  +
  sudo).  If you want to do stuff as root inside the chroot,
  just add yourself to root-groups/root-users.
 
 Or start it with `sudo schroot -p -c sid`.
 
 That's a possibility, though I would personally just configure schroot
 to give me root access directly.

I have tried to set root-groups=root,sudo in /etc/schroot/schroot.conf 
for the (only)  but this doesn't give me root access (even though I'm 
member of the sudo group outside the chroot and inside it as it seems 
the /etc/group files are the same).

I've also tried to add my user directly to the root-groups without 
success. What could I possibly do wrong?


 I'm still using version 1.4.19. But this feature sounds very good!
 
 Btw I have accidentally run `schroot -v` instead -V to get the version
 number. First I got a little shock but now the prompt shows the name of
 the chroot I'm logged into even if I only do `schroot -p -c sid`.
 That's great :-)
 
 Fantastic!  That's one of the little details set up by the setup scripts
 (50chrootname).  It will also handle other things like copying over the
 passwd database so you have the same accounts inside the chroot that you
 have on the host.

What do you mean by the setup script? Using the -v option?
Or is it `setup-start`? Should I run it after I've changed schroot.conf 
which is maybe the solution to my problem with the permission from above?


Btw do you know a some documentation on how I schroot and chroot work? Is 
it really only changing the root directory. I'm wondering because when I 
install a package from sid it's not sure that it'll work with the Squeeze 
kernel?


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 11:54:58 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:

 I found what I did wrong: In the init.d script I used chroot instead of
 schroot:
 http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Lamy4K4a
 
 Could you please help me with the correct command?
 Instead of `chroot /srv/chroot/sid /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus start` can I
 use `schroot -c sid sabnzbdplus start`?
 
 Then this would be my new schroot script:
 http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Lamy4K4a

I have made some changes to my script: 
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=VFr77mwK

There's some mess with the output of the commands. So it's not really 
nice but it's working.

I've tried to use the -q option for schroot but it's still talking...


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

Thanks for your answer, Bob!

On Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:28:52 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
 Installed sid $ sudo debootstrap sid /srv/chroot/sid/
 http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/
 
 I haven't submitted a bug yet but I always have problems with sysvinit
 postinst depending upon ischroot and ischroot getting it wrong and that
 leaving a broken /run - /var/run behind.  You might hit that too.
 
 You should set up a usr/sbin/policy-rc.d script in your chroot.
 Something like this:
 
   #!/bin/sh exit 101
 
 That will prevent installations from starting daemons in the chroot. Or
 if there is a daemon that you wish to start in the chroot then you could
 use a script such as this:
 
   #!/bin/sh # /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d [options] initscript ID actions
   # [runlevel]
   # /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d [options] --list initscript ID [runlevel
   # ...]
   # See /usr/share/doc/sysv-rc/README.policy-rc.d for documentation. #
   Live example found in ps:
   #   /bin/sh /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d x11-common stop unknown while [ $#
   -gt 0 ]; do
   case $1 in
   --list) exit 101 ;; --quiet) shift ;; -*) shift ;;
   cron) exit 0 ;; nullmailer) exit 0 ;;
   *) exit 101 ;;
   esac
   done exit 101
 
 See /usr/share/doc/sysv-rc/README.policy-rc.d.gz for documentation.

The program I'd like to jail is a daemon which means I should use the 
longer script. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything about the initscript 
ID in the policy-rc.d documentation.

Can I just copy/paste the script in my case to
/srv/chroot/sid/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
and make it executable?

I found this:
There is a provision for a local initscript policy layer (...),
which allows the local system administrator to control the behaviour of
invoke-rc.d for every initscript id and action
http://people.debian.org/~hmh/invokerc.d-policyrc.d-specification.txt

So this script controls the way and order the daemons are started?
Is it correct that without it I wouldn't be able to start the daemon from 
outside the chroot because of this:

Can I run a dæmons in a chroot?
(...) Unfortunately,  this  means schroot  detects  that  the  program  
exited  (the  dæmon is a orphaned grandchild of this process) and it 
then  ends  the  session. (...)
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man7/schroot-faq.7.html


 Entered the chroot with $ sudo schroot -p -c sid
 
 Installed locales and reconfigured them. I also installed vim.
 
 Seems reasonable so far.  Some packages will require /proc.  Some will
 also require /dev.  Some will require other things.

Oh, yes, I read about that but I forgot to update my /etc/fstab and mount 
the directories. Should I also remount /sys?

Or is there a better way to do this? I mean can schroot handle it 
directly so that when I create a new jail or copy one that the 
directories are remounted there as well?


 I noticed that auto-completion isn't working.
 What packages should I install? Is auto-complete-el sufficient or is
 there a meta package for some base system packages?
 
   apt-get install bash-completion
 
 In the chroot I have created a new user called hoferr and am now able
 to login without root privilieges.
 But in there sudo is missing. Maybe this can be resolved by installing
 the correct base system meta package mentioned above?
 
   apt-get install sudo

Thanks!

Btw I had to set the password for my user inside the chroot to be able to 
use sudo.


 Aside some missing packages everything looks promising.
 
 The premise of debootstrap is that it installs a very small system. If
 you want something installed you are going to need to install it
 yourself.
 
 Perhaps you should consider using 'tasksel' to install a standard task
 set of packages.  That would pull in a lot.  I prefer the small system
 and only install what I need to install.  But if you don't like that
 then you may always install a larger set all at once.

Aha, the base system option of the Debian installer uses tasksel.

I think I'll try with the minimal installation as well and when I run 
into serious problems I might install the rest with tasksel. It makes to 
not install too much because I won't work in the chroot. So probably even 
sudo and bash-completion are too much...

Btw In the jail I also did `dpkg-reconfigure tzdata` to set the time zone 
(it was set to Etc). But I don't know if that makes any difference...


 To get back to my main reason of doing this: After stopping the old
 sabnzbdplus can I just install the chroot sabnzbplus with the normal
 home partition mounted?
 
 Yes.

I could also just use /etc/schroot/default/copyfiles and put the config 
directory .sabnzbd onto it. Like that I still have the configuration file 
outside of the jail in my home dir and when I retsart the daemon the jail 
gets restarted as well and the config dir is copied again.

Btw when I think about it: schroot manages the copying of the files. So 
when I create a new jail the files are copied in there as well.
Is it possible to have a separate 

Re: Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:42:58 +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:

 On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:34:26PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 I have some questions about starting daemons in a chroot environment or
 rather about starting schroot on bootup.
 The reason I want to do this is to clean up my server. It's a Squeeze
 with an AMD64 kernel from backports. Some packages are from testing
 which gives me problems because of dependencies that can't be
 fullfilled: sabnzbdplus from testing depends on python so I can't
 install build- essential...
 
 So far I was able to setup a chroot with schroot and installed sid in
 it.
 
 [sid]
 description=Debian sid (unstable)
 directory=/srv/chroot/sid users=hoferr groups=hoferr root-groups=root
 aliases=unstable,default
 
 set type=directory here

That sounds great what I can read in the schroot.conf manpage:
In consequence, filesystems  such  as  /proc  are  not  mounted  in  
plain chroots;  it  is  the  responsibility  of  the  system 
administrator to configure  such  chroots  by  hand,  whereas  
directory   chroots   are automatically  configured.

This means I can remove the remounts of /proc, /dev and /sys to /srv/
chroot/sid/... from my /etc/fstab?

But when I try this out and comment the proc and dev remounts and restart 
the system sabnzbd+ isn't started automatically and when I try it when 
the init.d script manually I get:
[] Starting SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber:start-stop-daemon: nothing 
in /proc - not mounted?
 failed!


 In the chroot I have created a new user called hoferr and am now able
 to login without root privilieges.
 But in there sudo is missing. Maybe this can be resolved by installing
 the correct base system meta package mentioned above?
 
 You could install sudo.  But why?  This is what schroot /is/ (chroot +
 sudo).  If you want to do stuff as root inside the chroot,
 just add yourself to root-groups/root-users.

Or start it with `sudo schroot -p -c sid`.


 Aside some missing packages everything looks promising.
 To get back to my main reason of doing this: After stopping the old
 sabnzbdplus can I just install the chroot sabnzbplus with the normal
 home partition mounted? It will probably start automatically when the
 chroot is started and I should be able to access its web service from
 the LAN.
 
 But how can I start the chroot on bootup automatically. i probably just
 have to write a init.d script and do a update.rc.
 
 Is this enough as init.d script?
 http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=hHSvG30v
 
 No.  You need LSB dependencies (you'll need
   Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog schroot
 and the same for Required-Stop).
 You will also need to start an schroot /session/, and then start up the
 services inside that session.  And you'll need to stop the services and
 end the session on stop.
 
 Note that schroot 1.6.x (in unstable) have a new facility for starting
 and stopping services inside the chroot.  In schroot.conf, add
 setup.services=service1,service2 etc.  It won't handle LSB ordering or
 anything advanced though--it just runs invoke-rc.d in order on the list
 when you start a session, and stop in reverse order on ending the
 session.  Using this facility would avoid the need to manually stop and
 start services in your init script; you'd just need to create and end a
 session.  Whether that's useful or not depends on your specific needs,
 but it's there if you want to try it out.

I'm still using version 1.4.19. But this feature sounds very good!

Btw I have accidentally run `schroot -v` instead -V to get the version 
number. First I got a little shock but now the prompt shows the name of 
the chroot I'm logged into even if I only do `schroot -p -c sid`. That's 
great :-)


Thanks
Ramon


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Daemons in schroot or how to start chroot automatically

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I have some questions about starting daemons in a chroot environment or 
rather about starting schroot on bootup.
The reason I want to do this is to clean up my server. It's a Squeeze 
with an AMD64 kernel from backports. Some packages are from testing which 
gives me problems because of dependencies that can't be fullfilled: 
sabnzbdplus from testing depends on python so I can't install build-
essential...

So far I was able to setup a chroot with schroot and installed sid in it.
What I did:

Mounted a 327G partition to /srv
and created a new directory /srv/chroot/sid

Edited /etc/schroot/schroot.conf

[sid]
description=Debian sid (unstable)
directory=/srv/chroot/sid
users=hoferr
groups=hoferr
root-groups=root
aliases=unstable,default

Installed sid
$ sudo debootstrap sid /srv/chroot/sid/ http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/

Entered the chroot with
$ sudo schroot -p -c sid

Installed locales and reconfigured them. I also installed vim.
I noticed that auto-completion isn't working.
What packages should I install? Is auto-complete-el sufficient or is 
there a meta package for some base system packages?

In the chroot I have created a new user called hoferr and am now able to 
login without root privilieges.
But in there sudo is missing. Maybe this can be resolved by installing 
the correct base system meta package mentioned above?


Aside some missing packages everything looks promising.
To get back to my main reason of doing this: After stopping the old 
sabnzbdplus can I just install the chroot sabnzbplus with the normal 
home partition mounted? It will probably start automatically when the 
chroot is started and I should be able to access its web service from the 
LAN.

But how can I start the chroot on bootup automatically. i probably just 
have to write a init.d script and do a update.rc.

Is this enough as init.d script?
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=hHSvG30v

Or should I use the skeleton?
If yes what are the Required-Start/Stop variables?
And should I then just create a DAEMON script in /usr/sbin with the 
following content?

#! /bin/sh
schroot -c sid





Best regards
Ramon


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Reason to use a partition

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I have accidentally found that it's possible to use a whole disk instead 
of a partition spanning a whole disk.

I have two 2 TB disks. One (sdi) has a partition with jfs and the other 
(sdk) has xfs directly on the disk:

/dev/sdi1  jfs1.9T  1.9T  3.9G 100% /mnt/recordings
/dev/sdk   xfs1.9T  1.9T  3.3G 100% /mnt/recordings_temp

Is there a reason why one should use a partition spanning the whole disk 
instead of creating the filesystem directly on the disk?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Reason to use a partition

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:04:04 +0200, Claudius Hubig wrote:

 Hello Ramon,
 
 Ramon Hofer ramonho...@bluewin.ch wrote:
 /dev/sdi1  jfs1.9T  1.9T  3.9G 100% /mnt/recordings /dev/sdk   
xfs1.9T  1.9T  3.3G 100% /mnt/recordings_temp
 
 Is there a reason why one should use a partition spanning the whole
 disk instead of creating the filesystem directly on the disk?
 
 If you use a partition, it is possible to move the partition a little
 bit (a few kilo-/megabytes is usually enough) to align it with the
 blocks of the HDD.
 
 I don’t know if this is possible when using disks directly. In any case,
 it will be impossible to boot from such a disk, since there’s no room
 for the MBR (or, if there is room for the MBR, the filesystem will be
 unaligned with the disk blocks).
 
 I therefore would always prefer to use a single-partition layout rather
 than the raw disk.

Thanks for the answer!

I have created a new partition and the filesystem on it.


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: Reason to use a partition

[Ramon Hofer]

On Die, 2012-07-03 at 03:59 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 On 7/3/2012 3:16 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:04:04 +0200, Claudius Hubig wrote:
  
  Hello Ramon,
 
  Ramon Hofer ramonho...@bluewin.ch wrote:
  /dev/sdi1  jfs1.9T  1.9T  3.9G 100% /mnt/recordings /dev/sdk   
 xfs1.9T  1.9T  3.3G 100% /mnt/recordings_temp
 
  Is there a reason why one should use a partition spanning the whole
  disk instead of creating the filesystem directly on the disk?
 
  If you use a partition, it is possible to move the partition a little
  bit (a few kilo-/megabytes is usually enough) to align it with the
  blocks of the HDD.
 
  I don’t know if this is possible when using disks directly. In any case,
  it will be impossible to boot from such a disk, since there’s no room
  for the MBR (or, if there is room for the MBR, the filesystem will be
  unaligned with the disk blocks).
 
  I therefore would always prefer to use a single-partition layout rather
  than the raw disk.
  
  Thanks for the answer!
 
 Except Claudius gave you the wrong answer for your situation.  You got
 impatient again Ramon.

I'm learning for exams and am happy for any distraction ;-)
And I wanted to ask at different places to be able to compare different
answers.


  I have created a new partition and the filesystem on it.
 
 As I replied on XFS, there's ZERO reason for putting one partition on a
 dedicated mythTV recording drive.  And since this is an Advanced Format
 drive, you instantly misaligned XFS by creating that partition.  None of
 the Squeeze partitioning tools understand ADF drives and will all
 therefore create a sector misaligned partition, causing serious
 performance degradation due to RMW cycles within the drive.
 
 The definition of the word partition means to divide a whole into
 smaller pieces.  If you do not intend to divide your disk into smaller
 pieces, but will be formatting the entire disk with a single filesystem,
 then there is no reason to create a partition table with 1 partition.

That's how I understand the word partition too.


 Delete the partition, and directly format the drive with XFS, and you'll
 be sector aligned, and everything will work as you expect.

Thanks!

I'm now copying the recordings :-)


Cheers
Ramon



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Recovering nested raid (was LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot)

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:46:55 +0200
Ramon Hofer ramonho...@bluewin.ch wrote:

 I'm again having problems with the disks getting kicked out of the
 array :-o

I've already asked this before on the debian list and got an answer.
But I'm not sure if I should do this.

Here's a link to my old problem:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/04/msg01290.html

The answer from Daniel Koch (thx again) was:

 - Zero all the superblocks on all the disks.
 ~$ mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd{b..d}
 
 - Recreate the array with the --assume-clean option.
 ~$ mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --auto=yes --assume-clean
 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
 
 - Mark it possibly dirty with:
 ~$ mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 --update=resync
 
 - Let it resync
 
 - Mount it and see if it is restored

I'm not sure if this is the correct way here too because I have a
nested raid.

If yes then this should work for me now:

~$ mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd[abcd]
~$ mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd[efgh]

~$ mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1 --auto=yes --assume-clean
--level=5 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sd[abcd]
~$ mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md2 --auto=yes --assume-clean
--level=5 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sd[efgh]

~$ mdadm --assemble /dev/md1 --update=resync
~$ mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 --update=resync

Now md0 should have it's members back and I can start it again
~$ mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/md[12]

And if I'm very lucky this time I still have my data on the array :-)


I wanted to ask you before I try this if this could help.
Maybe I should ask in the linux raid mailing list too?


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

I'm again having problems with the disks getting kicked out of the
array :-o

First of all the old WD green 2TB disk which was marked failed also
makes problems in the Netgear ReadyNas. I will see if I still have
warranty and try to get a new one.

But the other issue scares me a bit ;-)

Here's what I've done so far:

Yesterday I had setup md1 with the four new WD black 2TB disks
~$ mdadm -C /dev/md1 -c 128 -n4 -l5 /dev/sd[abcd]
~$ mdadm --readwrite /dev/md

I created md0 with md1 as a linear array
~$ mdadm -C /dev/md0 --force -n1 -l linear /dev/md1

On md0 I created the xfs filesystem
~$ mkfs.xfs -d agcount=7,su=131072,sw=3 /dev/md0

Then I copied everything from the old md9 raid5 with the Samsung 1.5TB
to md0.

Today I shut the server down and mounted the mobo, os hdd, the Samsung
1.5 TB drives from the old md9 hdds and the mythtv recording hdd to the
Norco.
Everything went well. I mounted the expander to the case wall and fixed
the cables to stay in place.

Then I booted up again and created md2 with the four Samsung 1.5TB disks
~$ mdadm -C /dev/md2 -c 128 -n4 -l5 /dev/sd[efgh]
~$ mdadm --readwrite /dev/md2

After this I expanded the linear array
~$ mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --add /dev/md2

and the filesystem
~$ xfs_growfs /mnt/media-raid

All this went well too.

But this evening I got 10 emails from mdadm. I've again pastbined
them because I didn't want to add them to this text:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ftpmfSpv


I wanted to recreate the array
~$ sudo mdadm -A /dev/md1 /dev/sd[abcd]
mdadm: cannot open device /dev/sda: Device or resource busy
mdadm: /dev/sda has no superblock - assembly aborted

Here's the output of blkid:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=5AK0Eia1


 I forgot /var/log/dmesg only contains boot info.  Entries since boot
 are only available via the dmesg command.
 
 ~$ dmesg|sendmail s...@hardwarefreak.com
 
 should email your current dmesg output directly to me with no
 copy/paste required, assuming exim or postfix is installed.  If not
 you can use paste bin again.  I prefer it in email so I can quote
 interesting parts directly, properly.

I'm not sure if you dmesg helps solving this problem too. Unfortunately
I couldn't email it so I created a pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=2pNf9wGe


  I removed the 2 TB disks from the NAS and mounted them in the Norco
  and connected to the server vio lsi and expander. On these WD
  drives I created the raid5 (md1) and on top of that the linear
  array (md0). Upon creation of md1 the fourth disk (sdd) was added
  as a spare which I had to add manually by setting 
  
  mdadm --readwrite /dev/md1
 
 That's my fault.  Sorry.  I forgot to have you use --force when
 creating the RAID5s.  I overlooked this because I NEVER use md parity
 arrays, nor any parity arrays.  Reason for the spare:
 
 When creating a RAID5 array, mdadm will automatically create a
 degraded array with an extra spare drive. This is because building
 the spare into a degraded array is in general faster than resyncing
 the parity on a non-degraded, but not clean, array. This feature can
 be overridden with the --force option.

Thanks for the explanation and the hint. I will use --force from now
on :-)


  While it was syncing the disks I copied the files from md9 to md0.
  During this proces sdb was set as faulty.
 
 Probably too much IO load with the array sync + file copy.  Regardless
 of what anyone says, wait for md arrays to finish building/syncing
 before trying to put anything on top, whether another md layer,
 filesystem, or files.

I didn't read this before doing all the stuff above. Maybe it would
have saved from some headaches...


  That's why I'm already thinking of buying new disks.
 
  Well lets look at this more closely.  The disks may not be bad.
  How old are they?
 
 You didn't answer.  How old are the 2TB and 1.5TB drives?  What does
 SMART say about /dev/sdb?

Here are the dates I bought the disks:

04.10.2009: 1x Samsung HD154UI
17.02.2010: 3x Samsung HD154UI

12.12.2010: 1x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
17.03.2011: 1x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
11.08.2011: 2x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
01.10.2011: 2x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB

To be honest I can't remember why I bought 6 of the WDs. But I have sold
at least one of them. The fifth must have disappeared somehow ;-)

I have now stopped md0 and md2 and removed the Samsung and the WD green
drives again. If you want me to post the details of them to I will add
them again. But for now I have here the output of hdparm for the four
drives:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=xcD3mLUA


Maybe the problem now is related to the case because it's again sdb?
Or maybe it's already broken because I didn't cool them while copying
the files and rebuilding the spare drive.


  Yes sorry it's absolutely fine. I was just curious because you wrote
  when the array fills up it gets slower. So I thought when I add
  four new disks I'll get free space added and the linear array won't
  be filled anymore as much 

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:40:56 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 Well lets look at this more closely.  The disks may not be bad.  How
 old are they?  Send me your dmesg output:

Sorry I forgot to write the last time: The WD20EARS I have bough
between 14. Dec 2010 and 01. Oct 2011.

Maybe it was also caused by inappripriate cooling.
I'm copying the things from the old raid md9 to the new linear array
while have the old disks in the old case and still directly attached to
the mobo.
The new raid disks are already in the Nroco case. They're attached over
the expander to the LSI which is in the Asus mobo mounted in the old
case.
The expander and all of the disks are powered from the same PSU which
powers the mobo etc.

I had to do this because the sata cables are too short to mount the
mobo in the Norco. Unfortunately I can't connect the fans from the
Norco because these wires are too short as well. But I thought just to
copy things over and having only these four disks in the Norco it would
be ok :-?

Do you think this could cause the problem?


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:38:27 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 6/14/2012 4:51 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
  These commands don't match the pastebin.  The pastebin shows you
  creating a 4 disk RAID5 as /dev/md0.
  
  Really :-?
 
 That kind of (wrong) analysis is one of the many outcomes of severe
 lack of sleep, too much to do, and not enough time. ;)  Having 3
 response/reply chains going for the same project doesn't help either.
 We share fault on that one:  you sent 3 emails before I replied to the
 first.  I replied to all 3 in succession instead of consolidating all
 3 into one response.  Normally I'd do that.  Here I simply didn't
 have the time.  So in the future, with me or anyone else, please keep
 it to one response/reply. :)  Cuts down on the confusion and overlap
 of thoughts.

Ok I will.
I'm still learning the code of conduct for mailing lists ;-)

I then start right now.


First of all I tried to set the raid5 with the WD 20EARS and didn't
have much luck. They led to fail events when mdadm builds the array.
They worked in my Netgear NV+ with very low r/w rates 5 MB/s (which
I now assume is because of the disks.

That's why I'm already thinking of buying new disks. 

I have found these drives at my local dealer (the prices are in Swiss
Francs).

2 TB:
- Seagate Barracuda 2TB, 7200rpm, 64MB, 2TB, SATA-3 (129.-)
- Seagate ST2000DL004/HD204UI, 5400rpm, 32MB, 2TB, SATA-II (129.-)

3 TB:
- Seagate Barracuda 3TB, 7200rpm, 64MB, 3TB, SATA-3 (179.-)

I think the Seagate Barracuda 3TB are the best value for money and I
didn't find any problems that could prevent me from using them as raid
drives.

Btw. When I tried to set up the WD20EARS mdstat told me that the
syncing would take about 6 hours. Hopefully the Barracudas have at
least the same rate. Then the process would be finished on maybe less
than 9 hours. This seems to be acceptable for my case.


 Also, please note that with 2TB drives, the throughput will decrease
 dramatically as you fill the disks.  If you're copying over 3-4TB of
 files, a write rate of 20-30MB/s at the end of the copy process should
 be expected, as you're now writing to the far inner tracks, which have
 1/8th or so the diameter of the outer tracks.  Aerial density * track
 (cylinder) length * spindle RPM = data rate.  The aerial density and
 RPM are constants.

So if I see low rates in the future I can add a new raid5 and get
higher throughbput again because the linear raid would write first to
the new array?


  Now I only have to setup the details correctly.
  Like the agcount...
 
 Like I said, it may not make a huge difference, at least when the XFS
 is new, fresh.  But at it ages (write/delete/write) over time, the
 wonky agcount could hurt performance badly.  You balked at that
 20MB/s rate which is actually normal.  With XFS parms incorrect, a
 year from now you could be seeing max 50MB/s and min 5MB/s.  Yeah,
 ouch.

Another reason to set it up properly now :-)


  You really were an incredible help!
 
 When I'm not such a zombie that I misread stuff, yeah, maybe a little
 help. ;)

No really. The adventure of enlarging my media server would have ended
in total frustration!



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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:40:56 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 6/15/2012 8:36 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
  First of all I tried to set the raid5 with the WD 20EARS and didn't
  have much luck. They led to fail events when mdadm builds the array.
  They worked in my Netgear NV+ with very low r/w rates 5 MB/s
  (which I now assume is because of the disks.
 
 Ok, I'm confused.  You had stated you currently have 4x2TB disks and
 4x1.5TB disks.  WD20EARS are 2TB disks.  You said you'd already
 created a RAID5 and added to a linear array, then copied a bunch of
 files from the 1.5TB array, these 1.5TB disks presumably in the
 Netgear.  Is this correct?  Is the md RAID5 inside the linear array
 still working?  Which disks is it made of?

Ok, sorry for the confusion.
The four 2 TB WD green were in the Netgear NAS and the four 1.5 TB
Samsung are in the old raid5 (md9).
I removed the 2 TB disks from the NAS and mounted them in the Norco and
connected to the server vio lsi and expander. On these WD drives I
created the raid5 (md1) and on top of that the linear array (md0).
Upon creation of md1 the fourth disk (sdd) was added as a spare which I
had to add manually by setting 

mdadm --readwrite /dev/md1

While it was syncing the disks I copied the files from md9 to md0.
During this proces sdb was set as faulty.


  That's why I'm already thinking of buying new disks.
 
 Well lets look at this more closely.  The disks may not be bad.  How
 old are they?  Send me your dmesg output:
 
 ~$ cp /var/log/dmesg /tmp/dmesg.txt
 
 then email dmesg.txt to me.

I've uploaded dmesg to pastebin hope this is ok.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=dek1wca4


 The WD Black 2TB 7.2k is tested for desktop RAID use (Linux md) and
 has a 5 year warranty, costs $210.  The Seagate Barracuda TX 2TB 7.2k
 is also tested for desktop RAID use, has a 3 year warranty, and costs
 $210.
 
 My advice:  spend more per drive for less capacity and get a 3/5 times
 longer warranty, and a little piece of mind that the drives are
 designed/tested for RAID use and will last at least 5 years, or be
 replaced at no cost for up to 5 years.

Great advice!
I'll go for the WD Black 2TB. I found them for CHF 199.-


  So if I see low rates in the future I can add a new raid5 and get
  higher throughbput again because the linear raid would write first
  to the new array?
 
 I'm not sure what you're asking here.  Adding a new 4 disk RAID5 to
 the linear array doesn't make anything inherently faster.  It simply
 adds capacity.  Your read/write speed on a per file basis will be
 about the same in the new space as in the old.  I explained all of
 this before you made the decision to go with the linear route instead
 of using md reshaping to expand.  You said you understood and that it
 was fine as your performance requirements are low.

Yes sorry it's absolutely fine. I was just curious because you wrote
when the array fills up it gets slower. So I thought when I add four
new disks I'll get free space added and the linear array won't be
filled anymore as much as before and so it could regain it's previous
speed again.

But really not important for my case!
Just curiosity ;-)



 
  No really. The adventure of enlarging my media server would have
  ended in total frustration!
 
 There's still time for frustration--you're not done quite yet.  lol

Yes but now I'm in semi known territory ;-)


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 03:29:25 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 6/13/2012 2:22 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 17:30:43 -0500
  Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:
 
 This chain is so long I'm going to liberally snip lots of stuff
 already covered.  Hope that's ok.

Sure. Your mail still blew my mind :-)


  This is incorrect advice, as it occurs with the LSI BIOS both
  enabled and disabled.  Apparently you didn't convey this in your
  email.
  
  I will write it to them again.
  But to be honest I think I'll leave the Supermicro and use it for my
  Desktop.
 
 If you're happy with an Asus+LSI server and SuperMicro PC, and it all
 works the way you want, I'd not bother with further troubleshooting
 either.

Well the only differences are:

1. Can't enter the LSI BIOS to set up hw raid which I don't need to. So
no problem.

2. I can't see the network activity leds in the front of the case.
Which is a gadget I don't really need. If there are problems I can look
at the mobo leds if there's lan activity. So no problem too.


  Building md arrays from partitions on disks is a means to an end.
  Do you have an end that requires these means?  If not, don't use
  partitions.  The biggest reason to NOT use partitions is
  misalignment on advanced format drives.  The partitioning
  utilities shipped with Squeeze, AFAIK, don't do automatic
  alignment on AF drives.
  
  Ok, I was just confused because most the tutorials (or at least
  most of the ones I found) use partitions over the whole disk...
 
 Most of the md tutorials were written long before AF drives became
 widespread, which has been a relatively recent phenomenon, the last 2
 years or so.

AF drives are Advanced Format drives with more than 512 bytes per
sector right?


  I must have read outdated wikis (mostly from the mythtv project).
 
 Trust NASA more than MythTV users?  From:
 http://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/resources/columbia.html

I don't trust anybody ;-)


 Storage
 Online: DataDirect Networks® and LSI® RAID, 800 TB (raw)
 ...
 Local SGI XFS
 
 That 800TB is carved up into a handful of multi-hundred TB XFS
 filesystems.  It's mostly used for scratch space during sim runs.
 They have a multi-petabyte CXFS filesystem for site wide archival
 storage. NASA is but one of many sites with multi-hundred TB XFS
 filesystems spanning hundreds of disk drives.
 
 IBM unofficially abandoned GFS on Linux, which is why it hasn't seen a
 feature release since 2004.  Enhanced JFS, called JFS2, is
 proprietary, and is only available on IBM pSeries servers.
 
 MythTV users running JFS are simply unaware of these facts, and use
 JFS because it still works for them, and that's great.  Choice and
 freedom are good things.  But if they're stating it's better than XFS
 they're hitting the crack pipe too often. ;)

Here's what I was referring to:
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html

Filesystems

MythTV creates large files, many in excess of 4GB. You must use a 64 or
128 bit filesystem. These will allow you to create large files.
Filesystems known to have problems with large files are FAT (all
versions), and ReiserFS (versions 3 and 4).

Because MythTV creates very large files, a filesystem that does well at
deleting them is important. Numerous benchmarks show that XFS and JFS
do very well at this task. You are strongly encouraged to consider one
of these for your MythTV filesystem. JFS is the absolute best at
deletion, so you may want to try it if XFS gives you problems. MythTV
incorporates a slow delete feature, which progressively shrinks the
file rather than attempting to delete it all at once, so if you're more
comfortable with a filesystem such as ext3 (whose delete performance
for large files isn't that good) you may use it rather than one of the
known-good high-performance file systems. There are other ramifications
to using XFS and JFS - neither offer the opportunity to shrink a
filesystem; they may only be expanded.

NOTE: You must not use ReiserFS v3 for your recordings. You will get
corrupted recordings if you do.

Because of the size of the MythTV files, it may be useful to plan for
future expansion right from the beginning. If your case and power
supply have the capacity for additional hard drives, read through the
Advanced Partition Formatting sections for some pointers.


So they say it's about the same. But this page must be at least some
years old without any changes at least in this paragraph.

I additionally found a foum post from four years ago were someone
states that xfs has problems with interrupted power supply:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/xfs-or-jfs-685745/#post3352854

I only advise XFS if you have any means to guarantee uninterrupted
power supply. It's not the most resistant fs when it comes to power
outages.

I usually don't have blackouts. At least as long that the PC turn off.
But I don't have a UPS.


  Ok if I read it right it divides the array

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:38:27 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 Couldn't hurt.  And while you're at it, mount with inode64 in your
 fstab immediately after you create the XFS.  You were running with
 inode32, which sticks all the inodes at the front of AG0 causing lots
 of seeks.  Inode64 puts file/dir inodes in the AG where the file gets
 written.  In short, inode64 is more efficient for most workloads.  And
 this is also why getting the agcount correct is so critical with
 tiered linear/striped parity setups such as this.
 
 When you recreate the XFS use 'agcount=6'.  That's the smallest you
 can go with 2TB disks.  A force will be required since you already
 have an XFS on the device.

Sorry I haven't much time now. I'm invoted to a BBQ and already
hungry :-)

I just wanted to create the filesystem and start to copy the files.

So I tried and got this warning:

~$ sudo mkfs.xfs -f -d agcount=6,su=131072,sw=3 /dev/md0
Warning: AG size is a multiple of stripe width.  This can cause
performance problems by aligning all AGs on the same disk.  To avoid
this, run mkfs with an AG size that is one stripe unit smaller, for
example 244189120.

Should I take this seriously?


Btw: Should I mount every xfs filesystem (also the one for the mythtv
recordings) with inode64.
This is not true for the smaller ext4 filesystems I use for the os and
the home dir I suppose?


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:35:57 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

  Hmm, probably I have to create a raid5 with the four empty 2 TB
  disks attached to the LSI. Then:
  
  ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md0 -n1 -l linear /dev/md1
 
 WTF?

I also had to add --force to create the array with one raid5.


  Now I copy the content from the old raid5 with the four 1.5 TB
  disks to the new linear md0.
 
 Shuffleboard...  You didn't previously make clear that not all 8 disks
 were freely available to build your stack from the ground up.  The
 instructions I gave you assumed that all 8 drives were clean.  Now
 you're attempting to modify the precise instructions I gave you and
 play shuffleboard with your data and disks, attempting to migrate on
 the fly.

Sorry, I wrote this too in another thread :-(
I like taking some risk :-)

But since the old raid isn't written only read I didn't fear to loose
the data.


 This may not have a good outcome.  I guess you feel that you
 understand this stuff and are confident in your ability at this point
 to effect the outcome you desire.  If things break badly, I'll try to
 assist, but I make no promises WRT outcomes nor guarantee my
 availability.

I wanted to finally do something ;-)


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 17:30:43 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 6/12/2012 8:40 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:30:08 -0500
  Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:
 
  Try the Wheezy installer.  Try OpenSuSE.  Try Fedora.  If any of
  these work without lockup we know the problem is Debian 6.
  However...
  
  I didn't do this because it the LSI worked with the Asus mobo and
  Debian squeeze. And because I couldn't install OpenSuSE nor Fedora.
  But I will give it another try...
 
 Your problem may involve more than just the two variables.  The
 problem may be mobo+LSI+distro_kernel, not just mobo+LSI.  This is
 why I suggested trying to install other distros.

Aha, this is true - didn't think about this...


  Please call LSI support before you attempt any additional
  BIOS/firmware updates.
 
 Note I stated call.  You're likely to get more/better
 information/assistance speaking to a live person.

I didn't have enough confidence in my oral english :-(


  It sounds like the issue is related to the bootstrap, so either to
  resolve the issue you will have to free up the option ROM space or
  limit the number of devices during POST.
 
 This is incorrect advice, as it occurs with the LSI BIOS both enabled
 and disabled.  Apparently you didn't convey this in your email.

I will write it to them again.
But to be honest I think I'll leave the Supermicro and use it for my
Desktop.


(...) 

  Nono, I was aware that I can have several RAID arrays.
  My initial plan was to use four disks with the same size and have
  several RAID5 devices. 
 
 This is what you should do.  I usually recommend RAID10 for many
 reasons, but I'm guessing you need more than half of your raw storage
 space.  RAID10 eats 1/2 of your disks for redundancy.  It also has the
 best performance by far, and the lowest rebuild times by far.  RAID5
 eats 1 disk for redundancy, RAID6 eats 2.  Both are very slow compared
 to RAID10, and both have long rebuild times which increase severely as
 the number of drives in the array increases.  The drive rebuild time
 for RAID10 is the same whether your array has 4 disks or 40 disks.

Yes, I think for me raid5 is sufficient. I don't need extreme
performance nor extreme security. I just hope that the raid5 setup will
be enough safe :-)


 If you're more concerned with double drive failure during rebuild (not
 RESHAPE as you stated) than usable space, make 4 drive RAID10 arrays
 or 4 drive RAID6s, again, without partitions, using the command
 examples I provided as a guide.

Well this is just multimedia data stored on this server. So if I loose
it it won't kill me :-)


  Is there some documentation why partitions aren't good to use?
  I'd like to learn more :-)
 
 Building md arrays from partitions on disks is a means to an end.  Do
 you have an end that requires these means?  If not, don't use
 partitions.  The biggest reason to NOT use partitions is misalignment
 on advanced format drives.  The partitioning utilities shipped with
 Squeeze, AFAIK, don't do automatic alignment on AF drives.

Ok, I was just confused because most the tutorials (or at least most of
the ones I found) use partitions over the whole disk...


 If you misalign the partitions, RAID5/6 performance will drop by a
 factor of 4, or more, during RMW operations, i.e. modifying a file or
 directory metadata.  The latter case is where you really take the
 performance hit as metadata is modified so frequently.  Creating md
 arrays from bare AF disks avoids partition misalignment.

So if I can make things simpler I'm happy :-)


  Does it work as well with hw RAID devices from the LSI card?
 
 Your LSI card is an HBA with full RAID functions.  It is not however a
 full blown RAID card--its ASIC is much lower performance and it has no
 cache memory.  For RAID1/10 it's probably a toss up at low disk counts
 (4-8).  At higher disk counts, or with parity RAID, md will be faster.
 But given your target workloads you'll likely not notice a difference.

You're right.
I just had the impression that you'd suggested that I'd use the hw raid
capability of the lsi at the beginning of this conversation.


  Then make a write aligned XFS filesystem on this linear device:
 
  ~$ mkfs.xfs -d agcount=11 su=131072,sw=3 /dev/md2
  
  Are there similar options for jfs?
 
 Dunno.  Never used as XFS is superior in every way.  JFS hasn't seen a
 feature release since 2004.  It's been in bug fix only mode for 8
 years now.  XFS has a development team of about 30 people working at
 all the major Linux distros, SGI, and IBM, yes, IBM.  It has seen
 constant development since it's initial release on IRIX in 1994 and
 port to Linux in the early 2000s.

I must have read outdated wikis (mostly from the mythtv project).


  Especially because I read in wikipedia that xfs is
  integrated in the kernel and to use jfs one has to install
  additional packages.
 
 You must have misread something.  The JFS driver was still in mainline

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:30:08 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 6/10/2012 9:00 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  A situation update: Mounted the mobo with the CPU and RAM, attached
  the PSU, the OS SATA disk, the LSI and expander as well as the
  graphics card. There are no disks attached to the expander because
  I put them again into the old NAS and backing up the data from the
  1.5 TB disks to it.
  
  Then I installed Debian Squeeze AMD64 without problems. I don't have
  the over-current error messages anymore :-)
  But it still hangs at the same time as before.
 
 Try the Wheezy installer.  Try OpenSuSE.  Try Fedora.  If any of these
 work without lockup we know the problem is Debian 6.  However...

I didn't do this because it the LSI worked with the Asus mobo and
Debian squeeze. And because I couldn't install OpenSuSE nor Fedora.
But I will give it another try...


 Please call LSI support before you attempt any additional
 BIOS/firmware updates.

I mailed them and got this answer:

Unfortunately, the system board has not been qualified on the hardware
compatibility list for the LSI MegaRAID 9240 series controllers. There
could be any number of reason for this, either it has not yet been
tested or did not pass testing, but the issue is likely an
incompatibility.

It sounds like the issue is related to the bootstrap, so either to
resolve the issue you will have to free up the option ROM space or
limit the number of devices during POST.

This is what you've already told me.
If I understand it right you already told me to try both: free up the
option ROM and limit the number of devices, right?


(...)

  Thanks again very much.
  The air flow / cooling argument is very convincing. I haven't
  thought about that.
 
 Airflow is 80% of the reason the SAS and SATA specifications were
 created.

You've convinced me: I will mount the expander properly to the case :-)


  It was the P7P55D premium.
  
  The only two problems I have with this board is that I'd have to
  find the right BIOS settings to enable the LSI online setting
  program (or how is it called exactly?) where one can set up the
  disks as JBOD / HW RAID.
 
 I already told you how to do this with the C7P67.  Read the P7P55D
 manual, BIOS section.  There will be a similar parameter to load the
 BIOS ROMs of add in cards.

Ok, thanks!


  Sorry I don't understand what you mean by don't put partitions on
  your mdraid devices before creating the array.
  Is it wrong to partition the disks and the do mdadm --create
  --verbose /dev/md0 --auto=yes --level=6
  --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda1.1 /dev/sdb1.1 /dev/sdc1.1 /dev/sdd1.1?
  
  Should I first create an empty array with mdadm --create
  --verbose /dev/md0 --auto=yes --level=6 --raid-devices=0
  
  And then add the partitions?
 
 Don't partition the drives before creating your md array.  Don't
 create partitions on it afterward.  Do not use any partitions at
 all.  They are not needed.  Create the array from the bare drive
 device names.  After the array is created format it with your
 preferred filesystem, such as:
 
 ~$ mkfs.xfs /dev/md0

Ok understood. RAID arrays containing partitions are bad.


  Hmm, that's a very hard decision.
  You probably understand that I don't want to buy 20 3 TB drives
  now. And still I want to be able to add some 3 TB drives in the
  future. But at
 
 Most novices make the mistake of assuming they can only have one md
 RAID device on the system, and if they add disks in the future they
 need to stick them into that same md device.  This is absolutely not
 true, and it's not a smart thing to do, especially if it's a parity
 array that requires a reshape, which takes dozens of hours.
 Instead...

Nono, I was aware that I can have several RAID arrays.
My initial plan was to use four disks with the same size and have
several RAID5 devices. But Cameleon from the debian list told me to not
use such big disks (500 GB) because reshaping takes too long and
another failure during reshaping will kill the data. So she proposed to
use 500 GB partitions and RAID6 with them.

Is there some documentation why partitions aren't good to use?
I'd like to learn more :-)


  the moment I have four Samsung HD154UI (1.5 TB) and four WD20EARS (2
  TB).
 
 You create two 4 drive md RAID5 arrays, one composed of the four
 identical 1.5TB drives and the other composed of the four identical
 2TB drives.  Then concatenate the two arrays together into an md
 --linear array, similar to this:
 
 ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md1 -c 128 -n4 -l5 /dev/sd[abcd]  -- 2.0TB drives

May I ask what the -c 128 option means? The mdadm man page says that -c
is to specify the config file?


 ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md2 -c 128 -n4 -l5 /dev/sd[efgh]  -- 1.5TB drives
 ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md0 -n2 -l linear /dev/md[12]

This is very interesting. I didn't know that this is possible :-o
Does it work as well with hw RAID devices from the LSI card?
Since you tell me that RAIDs with partitions aren't wise I'm thinking
about

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:30:08 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

(...)

 You create two 4 drive md RAID5 arrays, one composed of the four
 identical 1.5TB drives and the other composed of the four identical
 2TB drives.  Then concatenate the two arrays together into an md
 --linear array, similar to this:
 
 ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md1 -c 128 -n4 -l5 /dev/sd[abcd]  -- 2.0TB drives
 ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md2 -c 128 -n4 -l5 /dev/sd[efgh]  -- 1.5TB drives
 ~$ mdadm -C /dev/md0 -n2 -l linear /dev/md[12]

Sorry I have another question to this procedure:

Can I put the raid5 from the old server which was attached over sata
to the LSI and mdadm will still recognize the disks? Will the disks
uuids be the same?

And when I have added the old raid5 which contains the data can I add
this to the linear array and still have the data or will it be lost?

Hmm, probably I have to create a raid5 with the four empty 2 TB disks
attached to the LSI. Then:

~$ mdadm -C /dev/md0 -n1 -l linear /dev/md1

Now I copy the content from the old raid5 with the four 1.5 TB disks to
the new linear md0.


Cheers
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

A situation update: Mounted the mobo with the CPU and RAM, attached the
PSU, the OS SATA disk, the LSI and expander as well as the graphics
card. There are no disks attached to the expander because I put them
again into the old NAS and backing up the data from the 1.5 TB disks to
it.

Then I installed Debian Squeeze AMD64 without problems. I don't have
the over-current error messages anymore :-)
But it still hangs at the same time as before.

I removed the LSI and installed the pbo kernel. Mounted the LSI again
and it stopps again at the same place.

I tried the BIOS settings you described earlier. It didn't help too.

So I wanted to update the BIOS. So I created a FreeDOS usb stick and
put the BIOS update files onto it. I got to the DOS prompt ran the
command to install the BIOS (ami.bat ROM.FILE). The prompt was blocked
for some time (about 5-10 mins or even more). Then a message was shown
that the file couldn't be found.
The whole directory where I put the BIOS update file into was empty or
even deleted completely (I can't remember anymore).

I'll try it again afterwards maybe the Supermicro doesn't like my
FreeDOS usb stick. So I'll try it with the Win program Supermicro
proposed [1] to create the usb stick.

If this doesn't help I'll contact LSI and if they want me to update the
BIOS I will ask my dealer again to do it. Probably they will have the
same problems and will have to send the mobo to Supermicro which will
take a month until I have it back :-/


[1]
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Boot-Manager-Disk/BootFlashDOS.shtml


On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 18:38:24 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

(...)

 I always do this when I build the system so I don't have to mess with
 it when I need to install more HBAs/cards later.  It's a 10 minute
 operation for me so it's better done up front.  In you case I
 understand the desire to wait until necessary.  However, the better
 airflow alone makes with worth doing.  Especially given that the
 heatsink on the 9240 needs good airflow.  If it runs hot it might act
 goofy, such as slow data transfer speeds, lockups, etc.

Thanks again very much.
The air flow / cooling argument is very convincing. I haven't thought
about that.

To mount the expander I'll probably have a month available until
the mobo is back ;-)


  Yes and the fact that I didn't have any problems with the Asus
  board. I could use LSI RAID1 to install Debian (couldn't boot
  probably because the option RAM option of the Asus board was
  disabled). I could also use the JBOD drives to set up a linux RAID.
  But I didn't mention it before the throughput was very low (100
  GB/s at the beginning and after some secs/min it went down to ~5
  GB/s) when I copied recordings from a directly attached WD green 2
  TB SATA disk to the linux RAID5 containing 4 JBOD drives attached
  to the expander and the LSI.
  
  I hope this was a problem I caused and not the hardware :-/
 
 Too early to tell.  You were probably copying through Gnome/KDE
 desktop. Could have been other stuff slow it down, or it could have
 been something to do with the Green drive.  They are not known for
 high performance, and people have had lots of problems with them.

Probably the green drives.
I don't have a desktop environment installed on the server. It was done
using `rsync -Pha`.
But it could also be because I've split the RAM from the running server
to have some for the new server. That's why now the running old Asus
server has only 2 GB RAM and on the Supermicro I mounted the other 2 GB
RAM stick (but when the disks are set up I'd like to put some more in).


(...)

  Exactly and the Asus doesn't. So if you'd have told me get another
  mobo this would be a option I'd liked to have :-)
  
  An other option I was thinking of was using the Asus board for the
  new server and use the Supermicro for my new desktop. And not the
  other way around as I had planned to do.
 
 That's entirely up to you.  I have no advice here.
 
 Which Asus board is it again?

It was the P7P55D premium.

The only two problems I have with this board is that I'd have to find
the right BIOS settings to enable the LSI online setting program (or
how is it called exactly?) where one can set up the disks as JBOD / HW
RAID.

And that it doesn't have any chassis LAN LED connectors :-o
But this is absolutely not important...


(...)

  Btw. I saw that the JBOD devices which are seen by Debian from the
  are e.g. /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1. When I partition them I get something
  like /dev/sda1.1, /dev/sda1.2, /dev/sdb1.1, /dev/sdb1.2 (I don't
  remember exactly if it's only a number behind the point because I
  think it had a prefix containing one or two character before the
  number after the point).
 
 I'd have so see more of your system setup.  This may be normal
 depending on how/when your mobo sata controller devices are
 enumerated.

Probably yes. I was just confused because it was not consistent with
how Debian names the normal drives and 

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

It's me again.

After several unsuccessful tries to update the BIOS I brought it back to
my dealer to let him do it.
He now says that the mainboard is broken and I get my money back.

Now my question is should I go for the same mainboard again or what do
you recommend?
I suppose the LSI problem was due to the broken mainboard but the
dealer also said that the LSI has the C7P67 not listed as a compatible
board.

What I want to connect to the mainboard is:

2x PCIe x8 for the LSI and the expander
1x PCIe x1 for the graphics card
1-2x PCIe x1 for TeVii sat card(s)
1-2x PCI for PVR-500 analogue TV card(s)

It would be nice if it had a connector for the lan chassis LEDs :-)


Best regards
Ramon


On Wed, 30 May 2012 17:38:01 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 5/30/2012 4:52 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Tue, 29 May 2012 20:49:32 -0500
  Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:
  
  On 5/29/2012 7:09 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:37:19 -0500
  Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:
 
  (...)
 
  Does the mobo BIOS show the disk device?  If not, does the 9240
  BIOS show the disk device, RAID level, and its size?
 
  What we need to figure out is whether this is a BIOS problem at
  this point or a Debian installer kernel driver problem.
 
  I have finally found some time to work on the problem:
 
  I set up a raid1 in the hba bios. I couldn't install onto it with
  the supermicro mb.
 
  Then I mounted the lsi hba into my old server with an Asus mb
  (can't remember which one it is, must have to check it at
  home...). It (almost) works like a charm.
  The only issue is that I can't enter the hba BIOS when it's
  mounted in the Asus mb. But when I put it back into the
  Supermicro mb I can access it again. Very strange!
 
  This behavior isn't strange.  Just about every mobo BIOS has an
  option to ignore or load option ROMs.  On your SuperMicro board
  this is controlled by the setting AddOn ROM Display Mode under
  the Boot Feature menu.  Your ASUS board likely has a similar
  feature that is currently disabled, preventing the LSI option ROM
  from being loaded.
  
  Very interesting! I didn't know that.
  The values I can choose for the AddOn ROM Display Mode are
  Keep current and Force Bios. I have chosen the Force Bios
  option. And I have disable the two options you describe below.
  In the supermicro the hba's init screen isn't displayed at all now.
  On the other hand in the asus I saw the init screen when the
  attached discs are listed I just can't enter the configuration
  program with ctrl+h although the message to press these keys is
  shown.
  
  I'm now able to boot into the 2.6.32-5 kernel.
  It takes quite a while until the megasas module was loaded (I
  suppose: the over-current messages are shown for a while ~2 mins
  and then it's boot normally until the login prompt.
  When I leave it alone I get the message:
  
  INFO: task scsi_scan_0:341 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
  echo 0  /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs disables this
  message.
  
  After booting the first time this evening I installed the bpo 3.2
  kernel.
  When I try to reboot the stable kernel the system hangs after the
  message Will now restart.
  
  After a while the above message about the blocked task appears
  again.
  
  The bpo kernel 3.2 seems to fail. The two over current-messages are
  shown and then this message:
  http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=XqVunR9e
  
  
  When I load the stable kernel it stop for a while again after the
  over-current message then finally gets to the login prompt. After a
  while I got this message:
  http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=w409KaFN
  
  
  But apart from that I could install Debian onto the raid1. Then I
  set
 
  This was on the ASUS board correct?  Were you able to boot the
  RAID1 device after install?  If so this indeed would be strange as
  you should not be able to boot from the HBA if its ROM isn't
  loaded.
  
  No I wasn't able to boot the kernel installed to the RAID1. Grub was
  loaded but only because I've installed it to the disk directly
  attached to the MB's SATA controller.
  But when choosing the RAID1 kernel it stopped (can't remember the
  message anymore). I thought I haven't set the boot option for the
  raid1 in the hba bios properly.
  
  
  the bios to use the disks as jbods and installed Debian gain to a
  drive directly attached to the mb sata controller.
  With the original squeeze kernel the disks attached to the hba
  weren't visible. But after updating to the bpo kernel I can fdisk
  them separately and put it into a raid5 (in the end I want to
  apply the 500G partition method Cameleon suggested).
 
  This experience with the ASUS board leads me to wonder if disabling
  the option ROM and INT19 on the SM board would allow everything to
  function properly.  Try that before you take the board to the
  dealer for flashing.  Assuming you've deleted any BIOS configured
  RAID devices in the HBA BIOS

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 29 May 2012 20:49:32 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 5/29/2012 7:09 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:37:19 -0500
  Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:
  
  (...)
  
  Does the mobo BIOS show the disk device?  If not, does the 9240
  BIOS show the disk device, RAID level, and its size?
 
  What we need to figure out is whether this is a BIOS problem at
  this point or a Debian installer kernel driver problem.
  
  I have finally found some time to work on the problem:
  
  I set up a raid1 in the hba bios. I couldn't install onto it with
  the supermicro mb.
  
  Then I mounted the lsi hba into my old server with an Asus mb (can't
  remember which one it is, must have to check it at home...). It
  (almost) works like a charm.
  The only issue is that I can't enter the hba BIOS when it's mounted
  in the Asus mb. But when I put it back into the Supermicro mb I can
  access it again. Very strange!
 
 This behavior isn't strange.  Just about every mobo BIOS has an option
 to ignore or load option ROMs.  On your SuperMicro board this is
 controlled by the setting AddOn ROM Display Mode under the Boot
 Feature menu.  Your ASUS board likely has a similar feature that is
 currently disabled, preventing the LSI option ROM from being loaded.

Very interesting! I didn't know that.
The values I can choose for the AddOn ROM Display Mode are
Keep current and Force Bios. I have chosen the Force Bios option.
And I have disable the two options you describe below.
In the supermicro the hba's init screen isn't displayed at all now.
On the other hand in the asus I saw the init screen when the attached
discs are listed I just can't enter the configuration program with
ctrl+h although the message to press these keys is shown.

I'm now able to boot into the 2.6.32-5 kernel.
It takes quite a while until the megasas module was loaded (I suppose:
the over-current messages are shown for a while ~2 mins and then it's
boot normally until the login prompt.
When I leave it alone I get the message:

INFO: task scsi_scan_0:341 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
echo 0  /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs disables this
message.

After booting the first time this evening I installed the bpo 3.2
kernel.
When I try to reboot the stable kernel the system hangs after the
message Will now restart.

After a while the above message about the blocked task appears again.

The bpo kernel 3.2 seems to fail. The two over current-messages are
shown and then this message:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=XqVunR9e


When I load the stable kernel it stop for a while again after the
over-current message then finally gets to the login prompt. After a
while I got this message:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=w409KaFN


  But apart from that I could install Debian onto the raid1. Then I
  set
 
 This was on the ASUS board correct?  Were you able to boot the RAID1
 device after install?  If so this indeed would be strange as you
 should not be able to boot from the HBA if its ROM isn't loaded.

No I wasn't able to boot the kernel installed to the RAID1. Grub was
loaded but only because I've installed it to the disk directly attached
to the MB's SATA controller.
But when choosing the RAID1 kernel it stopped (can't remember the
message anymore). I thought I haven't set the boot option for the raid1
in the hba bios properly.


  the bios to use the disks as jbods and installed Debian gain to a
  drive directly attached to the mb sata controller.
  With the original squeeze kernel the disks attached to the hba
  weren't visible. But after updating to the bpo kernel I can fdisk
  them separately and put it into a raid5 (in the end I want to apply
  the 500G partition method Cameleon suggested).
 
 This experience with the ASUS board leads me to wonder if disabling
 the option ROM and INT19 on the SM board would allow everything to
 function properly.  Try that before you take the board to the dealer
 for flashing.  Assuming you've deleted any BIOS configured RAID
 devices in the HBA BIOS already and all drives are configured for
 JBOD mode, drop the HBA back into the SM board, go into the SM BIOS,
 set PCI Slot X Option ROM to DISABLED where X is the number of
 the PCIe slot in which the LSI HBA is inserted.  Set Interrupt 19
 Capture to DISABLED.  Save settings and reboot.
 
 You should now see the same behavior as on the ASUS, including the HBA
 BIOS not showing up during the boot process.  Which I'm thinking is
 the key to it working on the ASUS as the ROM code is never resident.
 Thus it is not causing problems with kernel driver, which is
 apparently assuming the 9240 series ROM will not be resident.

Maybe I wasn't clear about that. The hba BIOS seems to be loaded in the
asus as well but I just can't enter its setting with ctrl+h.

Does all of this tell us anything :-?


 This loading of the option ROM code is what some would consider the
 difference between HBA RAID mode and HBA JBOD mode.

Well

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:37:19 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

(...)

 Does the mobo BIOS show the disk device?  If not, does the 9240 BIOS
 show the disk device, RAID level, and its size?
 
 What we need to figure out is whether this is a BIOS problem at this
 point or a Debian installer kernel driver problem.

I have finally found some time to work on the problem:

I set up a raid1 in the hba bios. I couldn't install onto it with the
supermicro mb.

Then I mounted the lsi hba into my old server with an Asus mb (can't
remember which one it is, must have to check it at home...). It (almost)
works like a charm.
The only issue is that I can't enter the hba BIOS when it's mounted in
the Asus mb. But when I put it back into the Supermicro mb I can access
it again. Very strange!
But apart from that I could install Debian onto the raid1. Then I set
the bios to use the disks as jbods and installed Debian gain to a drive
directly attached to the mb sata controller.
With the original squeeze kernel the disks attached to the hba weren't
visible. But after updating to the bpo kernel I can fdisk them
separately and put it into a raid5 (in the end I want to apply the 500G
partition method Cameleon suggested).


 Did you already flash the C7P67 BIOS to the latest version?  I can't
 recall.

I have tried to do that but it was quite strange.
I created a freedos usb stick with unetbootin and copied the files for
the update from supermicro into the stick. I did exactly what the
readmes told me. But when I did it the first time there was no output
of the flash process and the directory where the supermicro files were
located on the stick was empty.
When I tried to do the procedure again it complains that I have to
first install version 1.

I will now bring it to my dealer who can do the BIOS update for me.

And I will write to Supermicro if they are aware of the issue.


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 23:35:58 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

 On Sun, 20 May 2012, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 On Sat, 19 May 2012 13:06:40 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
  On Sat, 19 May 2012, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sat, 19 May 2012 04:19:33 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
   On 5/19/2012 2:52 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
   On Fri, 18 May 2012 17:57:56 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
   On 5/18/2012 9:39 AM, Shane Johnson wrote:
   After that I would look to see if
   something isn't shorting out a USB port.
  
   Yes, USB is the cause of the over-current errors, which is
   plainly evident in his screen shot.  But we don't yet know if
   this USB problem is what's hanging the system.  Further
   troubleshooting is required.
   
   The strange thing is as I mentioned in another post is that on
   the mb usb port 8 there's nothing attached and I haven't found
   where port 7 is :-?
   
   I wouldn't worry about the USB errors at this point.  Unless there
   is some larger issue with insufficient power on the motherboard
   causing the USB current error, it's likely unrelated to the
   storage hardware issue.
Fix it first, then worry about the USB errors.  Given you have no
   device plugged into those ports, it could be a phantom error.
  
  Yes I hope you're right with the phantom error :-) Especially
  because I can't find port 7. No label on the mb pcb nor in it's
  documentation.
  
  It might well mean one of the power planes is oversubscribed, and
  THAT can cause anything up to and including damage to hard disks,
  data corruption, and crashes.
 
 Thanks for the suggestion, Henrique!
 The PSU is a 750 W so I think it should be enough for now.
 
 Yes, it is probably enough.  You have to do a lot to overpower a *good*
 750W PSU (a crappy one, OTOH...).
 
 You should still do all testing with the minimal hardware setup.  From
 experience, you also need to be able to test using no keyboard or a
 different keyboard (and mouse)... USB is supposed to be safe from this
 crap as it can detect overcurrent, but since it IS detecting overcurrent
 in your case (be it a faulty alarm or not)...

The PSU is a Thermaltake. I have two PSUs with less power. Maybe I should 
try it with one of them?

I will try this evening with a old ps2 keyboard. But it would surprise me 
if this is the source of the problem because the usb transmitter for the 
keyboard / mouse is used in another computer without problems and the 
over-current messages are always related to port 7 and 8. Using a 
different usb port makes no difference...


Best regards


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:59:53 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/20/2012 1:13 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 I was able to set a RAID1 in the WebBIOS and set the bootable option.
 But I'm not sure if the setting was accepted. Even though when I set
 the bootable option again the WebBIOS tells me the option is already
 set - so it should be ok?
 
 Unfortunately the Debian installer doesn't list the RAID1 storage
 device :-?
 
 Are you using the very latest Squeeze installer ISO?

I'm using the Netinst from Unetbootin. I can try this evening another one.


 It's possible the driver in 2.6.32-5 used in the original Squeeze
 installer doesn't work with the 9240.  Support for the 9240 was added in
 2.6.32-29:
 
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=604083
 
 Something else to try:
 
 If the disks that were attached to the mobo SATA ports are still intact
 with Sqeueeze installed, boot the system with those attached to the mobo
 SATA but with the 9240 and expander removed from the system.
 
 Once booted, upgrade the kernel:
 
 $ aptitude -t squeeze-backports install linux-image-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-amd64
 
 Shutdown, install the 9240 only, power up and see if it boots without
 hanging.  If it does, power down, plug in the expander, cables, drives,
 etc, power up and see if Debian sees the RAID1 virtual disk, and the
 JBOD drives, if any are present.

I have done this already. I have installed Squeeze with the Netinst iso 
and the lsi and expander attached.
Then after the install when I couldn't boot removed the lsi card (with 
the expander still in the pcie port but not connected to the lsi card). 
Installed bpo kernel installed the lsi card again and still it hangs at 
boot.


Best regards


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:37:19 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/20/2012 1:13 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 There were no problems upgrading the fw :-)
 
 Unfortunately it didn't solve he problem.
 
 Grrr.
 
 3.  Go into the mobo BIOS and set and test these options:

 Quiet Boot: DISABLED
 Interrupt 19 Capture:   DISABLED
 --save/reboot/test--
 PCI Express Port:   ENABLED
 PEG Force Gen1: ENABLED
 Detect Non-Compliance Device:   ENABLED --save/
reboot/
 test--
 XHCI Hand-off:  ENABLED
 Active State Power Management:  ENABLED PCIe (PCI
 Express) Max Read
 Request Size:   4096 --save/reboot/test--
 
 None of this worked.
 
 Grrr.
 
 
 If none of this works, disable both on board SATA controllers:

 Serial-ATA Controller 0:DISABLED
 Serial-ATA Controller 1:DISABLED

 and connect all drives to the 9240, and re-enable Interrupt 19
 Capture:
 ENABLED

 This will allow booting from the 9240.  In the 9240 webBIOS, create a
 RAID1 array device of two disks, make it bootable, save and initialize
 the array.  Reboot into the Squeeze install disk and install onto the
 RAID1 device.  The initialization should continue transparently in the
 background while you're installing Debian.  When finished reboot to
 see if the boot hang persists.
 
 I was able to set a RAID1 in the WebBIOS and set the bootable option.
 But I'm not sure if the setting was accepted. Even though when I set
 the bootable option again the WebBIOS tells me the option is already
 set - so it should be ok?
 
 Unfortunately the Debian installer doesn't list the RAID1 storage
 device :-?
 
 G.
 
 Does the mobo BIOS show the disk device?  If not, does the 9240 BIOS
 show the disk device, RAID level, and its size?

The LSI BIOS shows the RAID1 array with the correct size. But I couldn't 
see the disks in the mb BIOS. But I haven't really looked for it so I 
will see this evening again if I can find it...


 What we need to figure out is whether this is a BIOS problem at this
 point or a Debian installer kernel driver problem.

This sounds like a plan :-)


 Hopefully you won't need to do all of these things as it will be very
 time consuming.  I'm attempting to provide you a thorough
 troubleshooting guide that covers most/all the possible/likely causes
 of the hang.
 
 Thank you very much for your help so far :-)
 
 Sorry it hasn't helped you make forward progress.

Still you help me by having good ideas. I would have already ran out of 
ideas...


 Did you already flash the C7P67 BIOS to the latest version?  I can't
 recall.

No I didn't touch the mb firmware.
I can do this this evening as well.


Best regards


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:27:21 -0500
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:

 On 5/20/2012 9:24 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Sat, 19 May 2012 11:31:51 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  
  On 5/19/2012 5:33 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
  Yes, I'm really thankful for the recommendation. And somehow I
  hoped you could jump in and help me :-)
 
  I'm actively working on it, have been for a couple of hours on and
  off. I'm reading your responses as I go before responding so I
  hopefully don't recommend something you've already tried.  I'm
  still researching. In the mean time, if you can, go ahead and
  flash the 9240 with the latest firmware, precisely following the
  instructions.
  
  Should I first flash the new firmware and then test what you
  describe below?
 
 Flash the firmware, then try too boot the system from the drives
 attached to the mobo SATA port, as you have been.  If the system locks
 as it did before, this will tell us the firmware update didn't solve
 the problem.  Given that the shipped FW was from 2010, I have high
 hopes the new FW will fix this problem.  I'm surprised your card
 shipped with a FW that old.  From what company did you purchase the
 9240-4i?  I'm wondering if it may have been sitting on a shelf for a
 while.

I purchased the card from http://www.techmania.ch/.
When I placed the order I asked them if I can come and pick it up
directly and they told me that they don't have an own warehouse but
they order the card directly from lsi.


  I am not very sure if I do the flashing right. Here's what I do:
  
  1. Read the firmware readme file [1]
  
  Installation:
  =
  Use MegaCLI to flash the SAS controllers.  MegaCLI can be
  downloaded from the support and download section of www.lsi.com.
 
  Command syntax:  MegaCli -adpfwflash -f imr_fw.rom -a0
  
  So I download the MegaCLI from [2] and read the MegaCLI readme [3]:
  
  Installation Commands: 
  ===
  1. Copy MegaCli.exe to a folder.
  2. Run MegaCli from the Command Prompt.  Use -h option to
  see help 
  menu.
  
  I create a FreeDOS USB stick with unetbooting. Copy MegaCli.exe and
  the imr_fw.rom [4] into a folder on the USB stick, boot it and run
  the above command to flash the card?
 
 Yep.
 
  
  [1] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
  20Files/20.10.1-0077_SAS_2008_FW_Image_APP-2.120.244-1482.txt
  
  [2] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
  20Files/8.00.40_Dos_Megacli.zip
  
  [3] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%20Files/
  README_FOR_8.00.40_Dos_Megacli.zip.txt
  
  [4] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
  20Files/20.10.1-0077_SAS_2008_FW_Image_APP-2.120.244-1482.zip
  
  
  (...)
  
  But I didn't know if it's ok to ask you by name.
 
  I've been doing a reply-to-all with each reply, hoping you'd
  follow suit.  This list is very busy thus a reply-all ensures I
  won't miss your posts.
  
  I'm using pan to read the newsgroup where's no reply to all button.
  But there's a mail to field which I'm now testing :-)
 
 Ahh, ok.  I didn't realize some people read mailing lists via news
 groups.
 
 When I reply-to-all, where does the copy end up that is sent to
 ramonho...@bluewin.ch?  Surely you read your email in an MUA such as
 ThunderBird or similar.  You can reply-to-all from there.

This message was sent by claws. Hope it works now :-)


  Please feel free to address me by name and/or contact me directly
  off list.  I recommended this storage controller/expander solution
  to you and it's not working yet.  I'm not going to leave you
  twisting in the wind.  That's not how I roll. ;)  Besides, look at
  my RHS domain.  I have a reputation to uphold. :)
  
  That's very kind!
  I know that everyone here does for free what they do. So I don't
  want to ask for someone to spend his/her time for me. But of course
  I'm really thankful for every single minute you spend to help me :-)
 
 I'll be with you until it's fixed, working, or until we identify the
 root cause.  It's always possible that the HBA is defective in some
 way. If neither the firmware update no other measures fix the
 problem, you may need to send the card back for replacement.

I really appreciate that. Thanks alot!


 BTW, after you flash the FW, power off the machine and remove the
 Intel Expander from its PCIe slot.  Disconnect the 8087 cable from
 the 9240. Then power up and see if the system boots from the mobo
 connected drives.  This will isolate the 9240 from the downstream SAS
 expander and drives.

This was my idea before so I did most of the tests without the expander
card...


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 13:41:33 +, Camaleón wrote:

(...)

 I have tried to check if I can see something in the mb BIOS to see if
 it can tell me anything about the connected hardware. But I didn't find
 anything in the PCI settings.
 
 Mmm, have you tried to set a RAID level instead using JBOD? It's just
 for testing... although this can only be done in a very early stage when
 the disks are completely empty with no data on them because I'm afraid
 changing this will destroy whatever contains.

I will play around this evening a bit.
Luckily my last attempt with the Supermicro HBAs wipped the disks already 
so I have some disks to play with ;-)


 Are you reaching the GRUB2 menu? If yes, you can select recovery
 mode/ single-user mode.
 
 Ah ok. Yes I have tried that with both kernels in recovery mode but
 without luck.
 There are alot more messages with the last two of them the over-current
 messages :-o
 
 If you could upload an image with the screen you get, it would be great
 :-)

Here you go:
http://666kb.com/i/c3yd21ff71u88d4x8.jpg

But I could only get the last part when it stopped adding new lines. It 
just was too fast to get anything before :-(


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 13:06:40 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

 On Sat, 19 May 2012, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 On Sat, 19 May 2012 04:19:33 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  On 5/19/2012 2:52 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
  On Fri, 18 May 2012 17:57:56 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  
  On 5/18/2012 9:39 AM, Shane Johnson wrote:
 
  After that I would look to see if
  something isn't shorting out a USB port.
 
  Yes, USB is the cause of the over-current errors, which is plainly
  evident in his screen shot.  But we don't yet know if this USB
  problem is what's hanging the system.  Further troubleshooting is
  required.
  
  The strange thing is as I mentioned in another post is that on the
  mb usb port 8 there's nothing attached and I haven't found where
  port 7 is :-?
  
  I wouldn't worry about the USB errors at this point.  Unless there is
  some larger issue with insufficient power on the motherboard causing
  the USB current error, it's likely unrelated to the storage hardware
  issue.
   Fix it first, then worry about the USB errors.  Given you have no
  device plugged into those ports, it could be a phantom error.
 
 Yes I hope you're right with the phantom error :-) Especially because I
 can't find port 7. No label on the mb pcb nor in it's documentation.
 
 It might well mean one of the power planes is oversubscribed, and THAT
 can cause anything up to and including damage to hard disks, data
 corruption, and crashes.

Thanks for the suggestion, Henrique!
The PSU is a 750 W so I think it should be enough for now.


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 11:31:51 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/19/2012 5:33 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 Yes, I'm really thankful for the recommendation. And somehow I hoped
 you could jump in and help me :-)
 
 I'm actively working on it, have been for a couple of hours on and off.
  I'm reading your responses as I go before responding so I hopefully
 don't recommend something you've already tried.  I'm still researching.
  In the mean time, if you can, go ahead and flash the 9240 with the
 latest firmware, precisely following the instructions.

Should I first flash the new firmware and then test what you describe 
below?

I am not very sure if I do the flashing right. Here's what I do:

1. Read the firmware readme file [1]

 Installation:
 =
 Use MegaCLI to flash the SAS controllers.  MegaCLI can be downloaded
 from the support and download section of www.lsi.com.
 
 Command syntax:  MegaCli -adpfwflash -f imr_fw.rom -a0

So I download the MegaCLI from [2] and read the MegaCLI readme [3]:

 Installation Commands: 
 ===
 1.Copy MegaCli.exe to a folder.
 2.Run MegaCli from the Command Prompt.  Use -h option to see help 
menu.

I create a FreeDOS USB stick with unetbooting. Copy MegaCli.exe and the 
imr_fw.rom [4] into a folder on the USB stick, boot it and run the above 
command to flash the card?


[1] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
20Files/20.10.1-0077_SAS_2008_FW_Image_APP-2.120.244-1482.txt

[2] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
20Files/8.00.40_Dos_Megacli.zip

[3] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%20Files/
README_FOR_8.00.40_Dos_Megacli.zip.txt

[4] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
20Files/20.10.1-0077_SAS_2008_FW_Image_APP-2.120.244-1482.zip


(...)

 But I didn't know if it's ok to ask you by name.
 
 I've been doing a reply-to-all with each reply, hoping you'd follow
 suit.  This list is very busy thus a reply-all ensures I won't miss your
 posts.

I'm using pan to read the newsgroup where's no reply to all button. But 
there's a mail to field which I'm now testing :-)


 Please feel free to address me by name and/or contact me directly off
 list.  I recommended this storage controller/expander solution to you
 and it's not working yet.  I'm not going to leave you twisting in the
 wind.  That's not how I roll. ;)  Besides, look at my RHS domain.  I
 have a reputation to uphold. :)

That's very kind!
I know that everyone here does for free what they do. So I don't want to 
ask for someone to spend his/her time for me. But of course I'm really 
thankful for every single minute you spend to help me :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Wheezy removed ifupdown

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

After upgrading the packages in Wheezy amd64 I can't connect to the 
network anymore. This is on my htpc where I only have xbmc running. So no 
gnome, kde, etc.
Every other computer in the network has no problems.

I can't even ping localhost. It says connect: Network is unreachable.
What I can do is assign a network address manually. But this doesn't help.

When I try ifdown eth0 it tells me that the command is not found. In the 
apt history.log (which you can find below) one can find Remove: 
ifupdown:amd64 (0.7~alpha5+really0.6.16) which for me seems to be the 
cause of the problem.

I now downloaded the package from my laptop, copied it to a usb stick and 
installed it with dpkg -i.

But the problem is when I do a dist-upgrade it will ignore the ifupdown 
package? Should I now just install the package with apt-get again?
And why did this happen?


/var/log/aptitude:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=PwStAR4N
(Maybe not interesting because I only use apt-get)

/var/log/apt/history.log
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=imeWtBTT


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 11:31:51 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/19/2012 5:33 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 Yes, I'm really thankful for the recommendation. And somehow I hoped
 you could jump in and help me :-)
 
 I'm actively working on it, have been for a couple of hours on and off.
  I'm reading your responses as I go before responding so I hopefully
 don't recommend something you've already tried.  I'm still researching.
  In the mean time, if you can, go ahead and flash the 9240 with the
 latest firmware, precisely following the instructions.

There were no problems upgrading the fw :-)

Unfortunately it didn't solve he problem.

 Also try the following:
 
 1.  Power the Intel expander with a PSU 4 pin Molex connector instead of
 using a PCIe slot.  Molex are the large standard plugs, usually white,
 used to connect hard drives for the past 25 years--two black wires, one
 red, one yellow.  With the chassis laying on your desk and the side/top
 cover panel removed, lay the anti-static bag the expander shipped in on
 top of the drive cage frame or PSU, then lay the expander card on its
 back on top of the bag--heat sink facing the ceiling.  Make sure it
 doesn't fall off and ground out to the metal chassis or mobo, etc.  This
 will eliminate a possible PCIe power bug in the mobo.

Did that but again no improvement.
Over-current messages still present and boot process still not finished 
properly.

But the over-current message is always present even with only mb, ram, cpu 
and graphics card.

Btw this is a PCIe x1 ATI FireMV 2260 card. With it I have both PCIe x16 
for the LSI and Intel cards available.


 2.  With the expander powered directly from the PSU, try the 9240 in
 each x16 slot until one works (I'm assuming you know that you must power
 down the system before inserting/removing cards or you'll very likely
 permanently damage the cards and/or mobo).  If no success here...

No success with the hba in either of the two slots. I have also tried to 
plug the graphics card to another slot.
And the expander was completely removed for these tests with no SAS cable 
connected to the lsi card.


 3.  Go into the mobo BIOS and set and test these options:
 
 Quiet Boot:   DISABLED
 Interrupt 19 Capture: DISABLED
 --save/reboot/test--
 PCI Express Port: ENABLED
 PEG Force Gen1:   ENABLED
 Detect Non-Compliance Device: ENABLED --save/reboot/
test--
 XHCI Hand-off:ENABLED
 Active State Power Management:ENABLED PCIe (PCI 
Express) Max Read
 Request Size: 4096 --save/reboot/test--

None of this worked.


 If none of this works, disable both on board SATA controllers:
 
 Serial-ATA Controller 0:  DISABLED
 Serial-ATA Controller 1:  DISABLED
 
 and connect all drives to the 9240, and re-enable Interrupt 19 
Capture:
   ENABLED
 
 This will allow booting from the 9240.  In the 9240 webBIOS, create a
 RAID1 array device of two disks, make it bootable, save and initialize
 the array.  Reboot into the Squeeze install disk and install onto the
 RAID1 device.  The initialization should continue transparently in the
 background while you're installing Debian.  When finished reboot to see
 if the boot hang persists.

I was able to set a RAID1 in the WebBIOS and set the bootable option. But 
I'm not sure if the setting was accepted. Even though when I set the 
bootable option again the WebBIOS tells me the option is already set - so 
it should be ok?

Unfortunately the Debian installer doesn't list the RAID1 storage 
device :-?


 Hopefully you won't need to do all of these things as it will be very
 time consuming.  I'm attempting to provide you a thorough
 troubleshooting guide that covers most/all the possible/likely causes of
 the hang.

Thank you very much for your help so far :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 18 May 2012 17:57:56 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/18/2012 9:39 AM, Shane Johnson wrote:

 After that I would look to see if
 something isn't shorting out a USB port.
 
 Yes, USB is the cause of the over-current errors, which is plainly
 evident in his screen shot.  But we don't yet know if this USB problem
 is what's hanging the system.  Further troubleshooting is required.

The strange thing is as I mentioned in another post is that on the mb usb 
port 8 there's nothing attached and I haven't found where port 7 is :-?


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 18 May 2012 18:28:05 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/18/2012 4:55 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 I installed squeeze amd64 yesterday on a raid1 (just to try).
 
 You need to explain this in detail:  installed on raid1
 
 Installed onto what raid1?  Does this mean you created an mdadm raid1
 pair during the Squeeze installation process, and installed to that?  To
 what SAS/SATA controller are these two disks attached?  Please provide
 as much detail as possible about this controller chip and if it is on
 the motherboard.  If so, please provide the motherboard brand/model.

Sorry I try to give you some more details. But to be honest I'm just an 
interested consumer ;-)
What I want to say is that probably I just don't know how to get the 
information. Like I can't get to the syslog when the system doesn't boot. 
But I hope with your help I can learn about ways on how to get to the 
information :-)

I installed Squeeze AMD64 Netinstall to a raid1 with the disks directly 
attached to the mainboard. During installation I partitioned the disks, 
set the filesystem to raid and created md raids during the installation 
then chose the md raids to be mounted as /boot, swap, /, /var, /usr, /tmp 
and /home.
This was just done because of curiosity.

Now the same system partitions are directly on one of the disks. It is 
still attached directly to the mainboard

The mainboard is a Supermicro C7P67 with a Marvel 88SE91xx adapter 
onboard.


 Then I installed squeeze
 with the card present without problems but booting afterwards didn't
 work again.
 
 Detail, detail detail!  To what did you install Squeeze?  Which disks,
 attached to which controller?  We *NEED* these details to assist you.

The system was installed to a disk directly attached to the mainboard. I 
thought it might be a good idea anyway to use the SATA ports on the 
mainboard for the os disk.


 Without the card installed bpo amd64 kernel but couldn't boot again.
 
 If you installed to disks attached to the expander/9240 and then yanked
 the card, of course it wouldn't boot.  Again, this is why we need
 *details*.  ALWAYS supply the details!

No, sorry for all the misunderstanding.

Even if I only have the os disks (attached to the mainboard), the lsi 
card and the expander (both mounted on pci-e x16 ports on the mainboard) 
the system hangs on after the first three messages (megasas: INIT adapter 
done and the two over-current messages).

And when I remove the LSI card only I see the over-current messages and 
the system boot just fine.

As well when I remove the expander as well I see the over-current 
messages and the system boots fine.


 Without the LSI card there are no problems (except the over-current
 message which is also present with only the mb and a disk).
 Installation works ok with and without card.
 
 Ok, so the USB over-current error has nothing to do with the hang during
 boot.

Yes, this is what I think as well but didn't want to keep quiet about 
that.

 Nevertheless I think the module for the card should be loaded but
 then it somehow hangs.
 
 Only full dmesg output will tell us this.

Yes. Unfortunately I don't know how to get the output when I can't login.

Oh ok, now I have removed the card again and found some interesting logs.

/var/log/syslog:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=00rN1X8s

/var/log/installer/syslog:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sDmjbeey

/var/log/installer/hardware-summary:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=V8fX4F0W


 Ok. But I have no clue either how to find this out. Maybe you could
 point into the right direction :-)
 
 Again, do not flash the HBA firmware at this point.  Provide the details
 I requested and we'll move forward from there.  It may very well be that
 the RAID firmware is causing the boot problem and you need the straight
 JBOD firmware, but lets get all the other details first so we can
 determine that instead of making wild guesses.
 
 BTW, did you disable all boot related options in the 9240 BIOS and
 force it to JBOD mode?  Did you read the instructions in their entirety
 before mounting the HBA into the machine?  This isn't a $20 SATA card
 you simply slap in and go.  It's an SAS RAID controller.  More
 care/learning is required.

To be honest I have never worked with anything else than the usual 
consumer products.
So the most of the terms I don't understand. But I will work harder I 
read how to disable these options.
What I saw is that it sets the disks connected to the expander to jbod 
mode.
And I disbled the cards BIOS completely but with no luck.


I hope this helps a bit but please be gentle with a hobbyist :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 18 May 2012 17:47:54 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/18/2012 9:23 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 Hi all
 
 I finally got my LSI 9240-4i and the Intel SAS expander.
 
 Unfortunately it prevents the system from booting. I only got this
 message on the screen:
 
 megasas: INIT adapter done
 hub 4-1:1.0 over-current condition on port 7 hub 4-1:1.0 over-current
 condition on port 8
 
 These over-current errors are reported by USB, not megasas.  Unplug all
 of your USB devices until you get everything else running.

Even when I plug out the chassis usb connector and only have the onboard 
usb connectors from the mainboard without connected anything to it the 
message remains.

This is the device 1 on bus 4 right? So it should be ID 1d6b:0002 Linux 
Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus?

 I also got the over-current messages when the LSI card is removed.
 Here's the output of lsusb:
 
 Bus 004 Device 003: ID 046d:c517 Logitech, Inc. LX710 Cordless Desktop
 Laser
 Bus 004 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching
 Hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus
 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003
 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device
 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 
 Again, this is because the over-current issue has nothing to with the
 HBA, but the USB subsystem.

Yes this might have nothing to do with the problem. But I still wanted to 
mention it because I didn't know if it's related or not. Or if I should 
worry about it.

Mainboards somethimes say strange things :-)
On my htpc I always have the message cpu fan error probably because I 
have a big passive cooler and use the chassis fans to cool them.
And this was no problems so far too.


 Nevertheless I think the module for the card should be loaded but then
 it somehow hangs.
 
 You're assuming it's the HBA/module hanging the system.  I see no
 evidence of that so far.

I came to that conclusion because when the card is mounted to system 
stops during booting.
When the card is remove the system boots.
There's this over-current problem that could cause something.
And maybe the pci-e slots have to do something with it. But I have 
plugged the lsi card to both pci-e x16 slots on the mainboard but both 
times the system didn't boot.
And the expander only uses the slot to draw it's power.

And I tried to switch the LSI bios off.

These are the things I tried to isolate the problem but unfortunately I 
don't have any other ideas.
I will now thoroughly study the lsi documentary...


 And after a while there are more messages which I don't understand. I
 have taken a picture:
 http://666kb.com/i/c3wf606sc1qkcvgoc.jpg
 
 It shows that udev is having serious trouble handling one of the USB
 devices.

Yes but only when the lsi card is attached. When it's removed the 
messages don't appear. And I don't even have anything connected to the usb 
ports. Really confusing...
I thought I had the same messages with the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 
cards :-?
But when I switched to the bpo amd64 kernel it _seemed_ ok.

This is why I hoped with the megaraid module it would be the same.

Btw just left of the Ext. LED connector there's the CR1 LED constantly 
(from the moment the system is powered) blinking with a 1 sec on / 1 sec 
off period. I couldn't find the meaning of this LED in the LSI documents. 
But to be honest I didn't read through the 500 page manual. Which I will 
do now :-)


 Then there are lots of messages like this:
 
 INFO: task modprobe:123 blocked for more than 120 seconds. echo 0...
 disables this message
 
 Instead of modprobe:123 also modprobe:124, 125, 126, 127, 135, 137 and
 kworker/u:1:164, 165 are listed.
 
 Posting log snippets like this is totally useless.  Please post your
 entire dmesg output to pastebin and provide the link.

I didn't have the idea yesterday that I could use the files under /var/
log. I was only missing the possibility to type dmesg in a terminal when 
the error occurs.

But I have posted some logs in my previous post. I hope these help more.

 I can enter the BIOS of the card just fine. It detect the disks and by
 defaults sets jbod option for them. This is fine because I want to use
 linux RAID.
 
 Sure, because the card and expander are working properly.

Yes, now I only have to convice the os to accept this :-)


 May this problem be the same:
 http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg30359.html Should I try a firmware
 upgrade?
 
 Your hang problem seems unrelated to the HBA.  Exhaust all other
 possibilities before attempting a firmware upgrade.  If there is some
 other system level problem, it could botch the FW upgrade and brick the
 card, leaving you in a far worse situation than you are now.
 
 Post your FW version here.  It's likely pretty recent already.

The FW version is 2.70.04-0862.

I have a little confusion with the versioning

Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 04:19:33 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/19/2012 2:52 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 On Fri, 18 May 2012 17:57:56 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 
 On 5/18/2012 9:39 AM, Shane Johnson wrote:

 After that I would look to see if
 something isn't shorting out a USB port.

 Yes, USB is the cause of the over-current errors, which is plainly
 evident in his screen shot.  But we don't yet know if this USB problem
 is what's hanging the system.  Further troubleshooting is required.
 
 The strange thing is as I mentioned in another post is that on the mb
 usb port 8 there's nothing attached and I haven't found where port 7 is
 :-?
 
 I wouldn't worry about the USB errors at this point.  Unless there is
 some larger issue with insufficient power on the motherboard causing the
 USB current error, it's likely unrelated to the storage hardware issue.
  Fix it first, then worry about the USB errors.  Given you have no
 device plugged into those ports, it could be a phantom error.

Yes I hope you're right with the phantom error :-)
Especially because I can't find port 7. No label on the mb pcb nor in 
it's documentation.


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 09:09:52 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Fri, 18 May 2012 21:55:36 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Fri, 18 May 2012 20:18:46 +, Camaleón wrote:
  
 Are you running Squeeze?
 
 Yes, sorry forgot to mention.
 
 I installed squeeze amd64 yesterday on a raid1 (just to try). Today
 when the card was here I put it in and couldn't boot. Then I installed
 squeeze with the card present without problems but booting afterwards
 didn't work again.
 Without the card installed bpo amd64 kernel but couldn't boot again.
 
 You have to be extremely precise while describing the situation because
 there are missing pieces in the above stanza and the whole steps you
 followed :-)

Ok, sorry for that! I try to improve :-)


 Okay, let's start over.
 
 You installed the lsi card in one of the motherboard slots, configured
 the BIOS to use a JBOD disk layout and then boot the installation CD for
 Squeeze, right?

Yes, but I didn't set the LSI BIOS to use the cards as jbod it did it 
automatically.

In the cards BIOS I saw that virtual drives can be setup. But since I 
want to use them as jbod I don't think I have to set virtual drives.
The Controller Property pages are very hard to understand.
So I tried with the factory default.


 The installation proccess was smoothly (you selected a mdadm
 configuration for the disks and then formatted them with no problems),
 when the installer finished and the system first rebooted, you selected
 the new installed system from GRUB2's menu and then, the booting
 proccess halted displaying the mentioned messages in the screen, right?

Exactly.
I only saw the three messages (megasas: INIT adapter done and the over-
currents) for some time. Then the screen was filled with the timeout and 
udev messages.


 And you installed the system with no glitches and then it hangs?
 
 Without the LSI card there are no problems (except the over-current
 message which is also present with only the mb and a disk).
 Installation works ok with and without card.
 
 So you think the system stalls because of the raid card despite you get
 the same output messages at boot and there's no additional evidence of a
 problem related to the hard disks or the controller.

I only get the two over current lines always.
The timeout and udev errors don't appear when the card is removed.


 Mmm... weird it is, my young padawan :-) that's for sure but it can be
 something coming from your Supermicro motherboard's BIOS and the raid
 controller. Check if there's a BIOS update for your motherboard (but
 just check, don't install!) and if so, ask Supermicro technical support
 about the exact problems it corrects and tell them you are using a LSI
 raid card and you're having problems to boot your system from it.

Thanks Master Camaleón :-D
The mb BIOS version is 2.10.1206. But I couldn't find the current 
version. They only write R 2.0.
And the readmes in the firmware zip don't tell me more.

I will email Supermicro to ask them.


 What's the point for listing the USB devices? :-?
 
 Because I thought I should mention the over-current message and it's
 related to usb.
 But I think it's a completely different thing. And I don't even know
 where port 7 is but port 8 is definitely empty :-?
 
 Yes, I agree. It seems an unrelated problem that you can try to solve
 once you correct the booting issue if the error still persists.

Will do that :-)


 Something wrong with udevd when listing an usb?? device or hub.
 
 Ok, unfortunately I have no clue what this means. But this message
 isn't there without card but it's pci-e?
 
 Ah, that's a very interesting discovery, man. To me it can mean the
 motherboard is not correctly detecting the card, hence a BIOS issue.

Ah yes, maybe it thinks it's a usb device?
I have tried to check if I can see something in the mb BIOS to see if it 
can tell me anything about the connected hardware. But I didn't find 
anything in the PCI settings.


(...)

 Mmm... the strange here is that there is no clear indication about the
 nature of the problem, that is, what's preventing your system from
 booting. Can you at least get into the single-user mode?
 
 I can't get to any login. Or is there a way to get into single-user
 mode? If you mean recovery mode: no luck either :-(
 
 Are you reaching the GRUB2 menu? If yes, you can select recovery mode/
 single-user mode.

Ah ok. Yes I have tried that with both kernels in recovery mode but 
without luck.
There are alot more messages with the last two of them the over-current 
messages :-o


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 10:33:06 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:

 On Fri, 18 May 2012 17:47:54 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 
 Post your FW version here.  It's likely pretty recent already.
 
 The FW version is 2.70.04-0862.
 
 I have a little confusion with the versioning from LSI. On their
 homepage [1] they list the firmware name 4.6 - 10M09 P24 as the newest.
 The filename of this file is
 20.10.1-0077_SAS_2008_FW_Image_APP-2.120.244-1482.zip. The starting
 number 20.10.1-0777 is the newest version according to the readme. The
 filename ends with 2.120.244-1482 which seems more in the format the
 version listed in my cards BIOS.
  
 [1] http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%
 20Files/20.10.1-0077_SAS_2008_FW_Image_APP-2.120.244-1482.zip

When I start the system the card shows it's version before it start 
detecting the disks.

It's 4.14.00 and the date it shows is 29.1.2010.

So it seems a bit old?


Best regards
Ramon


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LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I finally got my LSI 9240-4i and the Intel SAS expander.

Unfortunately it prevents the system from booting. I only got this 
message on the screen:

megasas: INIT adapter done
hub 4-1:1.0 over-current condition on port 7
hub 4-1:1.0 over-current condition on port 8

I also got the over-current messages when the LSI card is removed. Here's 
the output of lsusb:

Bus 004 Device 003: ID 046d:c517 Logitech, Inc. LX710 Cordless Desktop 
Laser
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Nevertheless I think the module for the card should be loaded but then it 
somehow hangs.

And after a while there are more messages which I don't understand. I 
have taken a picture:
http://666kb.com/i/c3wf606sc1qkcvgoc.jpg

Then there are lots of messages like this:

INFO: task modprobe:123 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
echo 0... disables this message

Instead of modprobe:123 also modprobe:124, 125, 126, 127, 135, 137 and 
kworker/u:1:164, 165 are listed.

I can enter the BIOS of the card just fine. It detect the disks and by 
defaults sets jbod option for them. This is fine because I want to use 
linux RAID.

May this problem be the same:
http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg30359.html
Should I try a firmware upgrade?

This card was recommended to me by the list:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/05/msg00104.html

I hope I can get some hints here :-)


Best regards
Ramon



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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 18 May 2012 08:39:57 -0600, Shane Johnson wrote:

 On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Ramon Hofer ramonho...@bluewin.ch
 wrote:
 
 Hi all

 I finally got my LSI 9240-4i and the Intel SAS expander.

 Unfortunately it prevents the system from booting. I only got this
 message on the screen:

 megasas: INIT adapter done
 hub 4-1:1.0 over-current condition on port 7 hub 4-1:1.0 over-current
 condition on port 8

 I also got the over-current messages when the LSI card is removed.
 Here's the output of lsusb:

 Bus 004 Device 003: ID 046d:c517 Logitech, Inc. LX710 Cordless Desktop
 Laser
 Bus 004 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching
 Hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus
 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003
 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device
 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

 Nevertheless I think the module for the card should be loaded but then
 it somehow hangs.

 And after a while there are more messages which I don't understand. I
 have taken a picture:
 http://666kb.com/i/c3wf606sc1qkcvgoc.jpg

 Then there are lots of messages like this:

 INFO: task modprobe:123 blocked for more than 120 seconds. echo 0...
 disables this message

 Instead of modprobe:123 also modprobe:124, 125, 126, 127, 135, 137 and
 kworker/u:1:164, 165 are listed.

 I can enter the BIOS of the card just fine. It detect the disks and by
 defaults sets jbod option for them. This is fine because I want to use
 linux RAID.

 May this problem be the same:
 http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg30359.html Should I try a firmware
 upgrade?

 This card was recommended to me by the list:
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/05/msg00104.html

 I hope I can get some hints here :-)
 
 Over current problems from what I have seen are hardware problems - I
 would make sure the intel expander doesn't need a external power source
 and if it does that it is functioning properly.  After that I would look
 to see if something isn't shorting out a USB port.
 

Thanks for your answer. But the over-current message is present as well 
without any cards. It's also there if I only have the bare mainboard and 
a disk in use.

However this doesn't bother me much for now because it doesn't seem to be 
the source of my problem.

But I'd like to know if someone has experience with the LSI card and if a 
firmware upgrade would be a good idea?
I don't want to break anything.


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 18 May 2012 20:18:46 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Fri, 18 May 2012 14:23:51 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 I finally got my LSI 9240-4i and the Intel SAS expander.
 
 Unfortunately it prevents the system from booting. I only got this
 message on the screen:
 
 megasas: INIT adapter done
 hub 4-1:1.0 over-current condition on port 7 hub 4-1:1.0 over-current
 condition on port 8
 
 How bad, but don't panic, these things happen ;-(
 
 Are you running Squeeze?

Yes, sorry forgot to mention.

I installed squeeze amd64 yesterday on a raid1 (just to try). Today when 
the card was here I put it in and couldn't boot. Then I installed squeeze 
with the card present without problems but booting afterwards didn't work 
again.
Without the card installed bpo amd64 kernel but couldn't boot again.



 I also got the over-current messages when the LSI card is removed.
 
 And you installed the system with no glitches and then it hangs?

Without the LSI card there are no problems (except the over-current 
message which is also present with only the mb and a disk).
Installation works ok with and without card.


 Here's the output of lsusb:
 
 (...)
 
 What's the point for listing the USB devices? :-?

Because I thought I should mention the over-current message and it's 
related to usb.
But I think it's a completely different thing. And I don't even know 
where port 7 is but port 8 is definitely empty :-?


 Nevertheless I think the module for the card should be loaded but then
 it somehow hangs.
 
 And after a while there are more messages which I don't understand. I
 have taken a picture:
 http://666kb.com/i/c3wf606sc1qkcvgoc.jpg
 
 Something wrong with udevd when listing an usb?? device or hub.

Ok, unfortunately I have no clue what this means. But this message isn't 
there without card but it's pci-e?


 Then there are lots of messages like this:
 
 INFO: task modprobe:123 blocked for more than 120 seconds. echo 0...
 disables this message
 
 Instead of modprobe:123 also modprobe:124, 125, 126, 127, 135, 137 and
 kworker/u:1:164, 165 are listed.
 
 Those messages are coming from the kernel side but I can't guess the
 source that trigger them.

How can I find out what they mean? It seems as if many different problems 
lead to such messages?

 I can enter the BIOS of the card just fine. It detect the disks and by
 defaults sets jbod option for them. This is fine because I want to use
 linux RAID.
 
 Mmm... the strange here is that there is no clear indication about the
 nature of the problem, that is, what's preventing your system from
 booting. Can you at least get into the single-user mode?

I can't get to any login. Or is there a way to get into single-user mode?
If you mean recovery mode: no luck either :-(


 May this problem be the same:
 http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg30359.html Should I try a firmware
 upgrade?
 
 (...)
 
 Wait, wait, wait... that looks a completely different scenario
 (different driver -mt2sas-, different raid card, encryption in place,
 different error...). And while updating the firmware is usually good,
 you better first ensure what's what you want to correct (we still don't
 know) and what firmware version solves the problem.

Ok. But I have no clue either how to find this out.
Maybe you could point into the right direction :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: chroot or virtual machine

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 15 May 2012 11:45:58 +0200, David Sastre Medina wrote:

 On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 07:13:23PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 Hi all
 
 I'm planning on setting up my new media server.
 
 So I was thinking of putting mythbackend, logitech media server,
 rtorrent, nfs, samba, etc. into virtual machines.
 
 A virtual machine for every server? On what purpose? Is it about
 security?

No no, not each in separate one.
But let's assume I want to switch from mythtv 0.24 to 0.25. Now I'd like 
to test it before I replace the working version.
I think this should be possible with chroot too but I don't know if I can 
adapt the init script.

Or if I get a mess with library versions I can have separate ones. I 
can't remember exactly but I needed a newer python version which was 
depended on a new gcc.
Maybe I can put the new libraries into the chroot envirmonment and still 
have the stable ones on the normal system.

I have never used chroot before. So I have no clue what it's really used 
for. I read that you can change the root directory for a program.
Does it also work for daemons?

Maybe I have to install a second Debian as described for Gentoo by 
Raymond described in the link. But is there a stage 3 tarball for 
Debian too?


Best regards
Ramon


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chroot or virtual machine

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I'm planning on setting up my new media server.

So I was thinking of putting mythbackend, logitech media server, 
rtorrent, nfs, samba, etc. into virtual machines.

There's a discussion in the mythtv-users mailing list about virtual 
machines. Especially this post got me thinking: 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/517075#517075

Is it possible to have a working mythbackend and test a new version. If 
all goes well replace the production backend?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 07 May 2012 14:35:31 +, Camaleón wrote:

(...)

 For the raided space, yes, but still you can redistribute the disk
 better.

Ah yes, this is true. 


(...)

 I'd like using green drives for this system. So low power consumption
 is a thing I try keep low. And until now they worked well (one false
 positive in two years is ok)
 
 Remember that a raided system is more exigent than a non-raided one. If
 one of that green disks which is part of a raid level is put in stand-
 by/sleep mode and does not respond as quickly as mdadm expects, the raid
 manager can think the disk is lost/missing and will mark that disk as
 failed (or will give I/O erros...), forcing a rebuild, etc... :-/
 
 Those green disks can be good for using them as stand-alone devices
 for user backup/archiving but not for 24/365 nor a NAS nor something
 that requires quick access and fast speeds such a raid.

I haven't thought about that. So the controller must be a bit more 
patient ;-)
I will stay away from the green drives in future.


 I have an i3 in that machine and 4 GB RAM. I'll see if this is enough
 when I have to rebuild all the arrays :-)
 
 Mmm... I'd consider adding more RAM (at least 8 GB) though I would
 prefer 16-32 GB) you have to feed your little big monster :-)
 
 That much :-O
 
 For RAM you never-ever get enough :-)
  
 Ok, RAM is quite cheap and it shouldn't affect power consumption with
 in comparison to 20 hard disks.
 
 Exactly, your system will be happier and you won't have to worry in
 increasing it for a near future (~5 years). My motto is always fill
 your system with the maximum amount of RAM, as much as you can afford,
 you won't regret.

Ok this sounds reasonable. But for 16 GB RAM I can get a 2 TB disk. So I 
will have to sleep in it :-)


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 08 May 2012 15:27:26 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Tue, 08 May 2012 09:22:56 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Mon, 07 May 2012 14:35:31 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 (...)
 
 Those green disks can be good for using them as stand-alone devices
 for user backup/archiving but not for 24/365 nor a NAS nor something
 that requires quick access and fast speeds such a raid.
 
 I haven't thought about that. So the controller must be a bit more
 patient ;-)
 
 Must is the key here. But don't expect such collaboration from mdraid
 nor the hardware controller :-)
 
 I will stay away from the green drives in future.
 
 I try to keep away from any computer device that is tagged to be eco-
 friendly (e.g., switches) because they usually cause more trouble than
 normal (watt-hungry) devices.
 
 And the same goes with computer power-saving options (hibernation and
 suspension), I never use that for servers... what the hell, when the
 computer is on I want it to be on not sleepy, I need a quick
 response to whatever event. When I don't use the computer I just
 power-off and no single watt is wasted.

This may be true for business but at home I like to have silent and 
energy efficient devices. They don't have to be as responsive as 
professional equipment I think.


 For RAM you never-ever get enough :-)
  
 Ok, RAM is quite cheap and it shouldn't affect power consumption with
 in comparison to 20 hard disks.
 
 Exactly, your system will be happier and you won't have to worry in
 increasing it for a near future (~5 years). My motto is always fill
 your system with the maximum amount of RAM, as much as you can
 afford, you won't regret.
 
 Ok this sounds reasonable. But for 16 GB RAM I can get a 2 TB disk. So
 I will have to sleep in it :-)
 
 I think 4 GB RAM modules can be still affordable (150€ per module?), if
 so, you can add 2 modules of 4 GiB. to get 8 GB from start and
 afterwards -should you need it- you can add 2 modules more to get 16 GB
 (although the board allows up to 32 GB. of RAM by using 8 GB modules but
 that can be costly).

This sounds good.
And I can leave the existent RAM and I have 12 GB after adding 2x 4 GB :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 06 May 2012 04:00:46 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/3/2012 1:27 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:

snipped

 mdraid is quite tolerant with drive errors before it finally kicks them
 offline.  Using the firmware RAID on this LSI card, any drive showing
 flaky behavior will be kicked very quickly from the array, and if you
 configure everything properly, you'll receive and email, sms text, or
 page telling you a drive is offline and why.  If you have a spare
 configured, the HBA will automatically start rebuilding the failed
 drive's contents to the spare drive.  If not, you simply pop the dead
 drive out, pop the new on in, and it starts rebuilding automatically.

I also had a failure where mdadm told me a drive failed. When I wanted to 
replace it I had a drive that was some sectors smaller than the array. So 
I took a closer look at the broken one. It seemed ok and I put it back 
into the array. It's working now for about a year :-)


 In a nutshell, (good) hardware RAID typically has every advantage over
 linux mdraid but two:
 
 1.  Flexibility--mdraid can span disks across many HBAs 2.  Absolute
 performance**
 
 **Host CPUs are much faster than HBA RAID ASICs, 3-4GHz vs 500-800MHz,
 especially with parity calculations (RAID5/6), and have many more cores,
 typically 4-24 in a single or dual socket machine, vs 1-2 cores in an
 HBA RAID ASIC.  Thus they have an enormous raw horsepower advantage.  A
 good hardware RAID HBA will have RAID5/6 performance similar to mdraid
 w/up to ~16-24 SAS 15K drives.  At some drive count beyond that the RAID
 ASIC will hit its performance ceiling.
 
 Many people use hybrid setups, where hardware RAID is used at the
 controller level and mdraid is used to span the HW RAID devices into a
 single Linux disk device, allowing for a single filesystem across dozens
 of drives connected to 2, 4, or more RAID HBAs.  With some application
 workloads multiple RAID groups are created per controller and these are
 then spanned or striped with md, for example high IOPS maildir servers.
 
 You mentioned previously you don't have a high performance requirement
 in which case I'd recommend hardware RAID.  That said, if you want to
 use RAID5/6 instead of RAID10, md RAID may be more attractive, as the
 parity RAID performance of the SAS9240 is less than stellar.  Depending
 on your workloads, it may perform great.  Just remember that the LSI
 SAS9240 is high end JBOD HBA with RAID firmware.  It's can act just like
 a HW RAID card from the viewpoint of the OS and the user, but it not a
 HW RAID card.  It's not even an entry level RAID controller--note the
 lack of cache and BBU option.
 
 Given what you've told us so far, I'd say you'd likely be very happy
 using the HW RAID mode.

I don't know if I understand correctly what you wrote: You say that the 
LSI SAS9240 is slower for raid 5 than mdadm? And less flexible?

How about CLI manage possibilities? Will I have to reboot when I want to 
set up a new array? Can I check the progress of the rebuilding process?

Even though I know raid 5 is risky with 2 TB drives I think it's probably 
the best solution for me. I don't want to loose too much storage space by 
limiting the 2 TB drives to 1.5 TB to fit the smaller drive size. And 
still would like to have a little parity safety.

But I haven't thought about putting the raid 5 arrays in another raid0 
array. I was thinking about lvm...
But this shouldn't make much difference? Only that I'm already a bit 
familiar with mdadm not with lvm...

 
 Or if I ever want to exchange the mainboard and use one with a SAS
 controller onboard?
 
 If your new mobo has an onboard SAS controller it will be an LSI
 controller, so this is a non issue.  But why would you switch to that
 and toss the 9240 anyway?  They use the same ASIC:  the SAS2008.  Look
 at SuperMicro, Tyan, Intel, and Asus  boards.  They all use the SAS2008,
 or an older or newer LSI SAS chip.
 
 LSI is the only viable motherboard-down SAS solution on the market, at
 least on quality server mobos.  There may be junk floating around the
 Asian markets with different onboard SAS chips.  If so, I'm unaware of
 them, and I'd recommend to anyone to stay away from them as the chips
 will be Marvell, JMicron, etc--cheap and unreliable.

I don't want to do that in the near future. But I don't know what will be 
in 5 or even 10 years.
What I know is that I hopefully still can use the case and the drives (at 
least most of them :-) ).


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sat, 05 May 2012 11:15:22 +, Camaleón wrote:

snipped

 Just a note of caution here.
 
 RAID 5 with big hard disks can be a real pain and a real problem. If
 one of the arrays go down, the rebuilding operation can take up to
 days (depending on the controller's capacity) and if while the RAID
 is rebuilding a second disk of the array is also down for whatever
 reason (it can be a false possitive) you can't recover your data, at
 least not that easily. That's why most people is switching from raid 5
 to raid 6, it adds an extra of security with no remarkable drawbacks.
 
 That's true.
 
 On the other hand it isn't possible to have different disk sizes in a
 raid 6 neither.
 
 I think yes, that you can, but only the lowest of the disk capacities
 will be used (this applies to all of the RAID levels). Software RAID has
 not such limitaion because you can mirror partitions, instead.

Ok so with sw raid I can use partitions as devices. This means I could 
divide my drives into 500 GB pieces and like this use the whole size of 
the disks?

Wouldn't it be easier to have e.g. four of each size and put them into 
raid5?


 So my plan seems still reasonable to me to have several 4 disks raid 5
 arrays. Like that I'm flexible to add bigger disks in future as they
 become cheaper and still can keep my old 1.5 TB disks. And if I would
 go for raid 6 with the 4 disk array I would loose a third of the
 capacity.
 
 (...)
 
 You've been warned :-)

Yes and I appreciate that!
But I can't see any other solution without loosing 500 GB of the two TB 
disks :-?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 06 May 2012 12:18:33 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Sun, 06 May 2012 11:46:21 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Sat, 05 May 2012 11:15:22 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 On the other hand it isn't possible to have different disk sizes in a
 raid 6 neither.
 
 I think yes, that you can, but only the lowest of the disk capacities
 will be used (this applies to all of the RAID levels). Software RAID
 has not such limitaion because you can mirror partitions, instead.
 
 Ok so with sw raid I can use partitions as devices. This means I could
 divide my drives into 500 GB pieces and like this use the whole size of
 the disks?
 
 If your hard disk capacity is ~1.5 TiB then you can get 3 partitions
 from there of ~500 GiB of size (e.g., sda1, sda2 and sda3). For a second
 disk, the same (e.g., sdb1, sdb2 and sdb3) and so on... or you can make
 smaller partitions. I would just care about the whole RAID volume size.

Sorry I don't get it.

Let's assume I have 4x 1.5 TB and 4x 2 TB. I divide each drive into 500 
GB partitions. So three per 1.5 TB and four per 2 TB disk. Then I put the 
28 partitions (4x3 + 4x4) in a raid 6?


 Wouldn't it be easier to have e.g. four of each size and put them into
 raid5?
 
 With software raid you have more choices because you can partition as
 you like: you can use the whole disk capacity or make small chunks and
 use them to be part of a RAID volume.
 
 Again, RAID5 is not something advisable and mdadm also supports RAID 6
 :-)
 
 So my plan seems still reasonable to me to have several 4 disks raid
 5 arrays. Like that I'm flexible to add bigger disks in future as
 they become cheaper and still can keep my old 1.5 TB disks. And if I
 would go for raid 6 with the 4 disk array I would loose a third of
 the capacity.
 
 (...)
 
 You've been warned :-)
 
 Yes and I appreciate that!
 But I can't see any other solution without loosing 500 GB of the two TB
 disks :-?
 
 When using the whole hard disk capacity for the array:
 
 - A RAID 5 volume with x4 1.5 TiB disks will give you an available space
 of 4.5 TiB (the sum of the number of the disks minus 1 drive).
 
 - A RAID 6 volume with x4 1.5 TiB disks will give you an available space
 of 3 TiB (the sum of the number of the disks minus 2 drives).
 
 That's the price for the added data security. If you are constrained
 about hard disk space, remember that you can add LVM and your spacing
 problems are be solved ;-)

My problem is that I don't have much experience with raid. Only about the 
two years where I only had one drive failure which was false alarm. I 
could put it right back in.

So I think I'll have to burn my fingers myself to understand the little 
(or maybe even misleading in some sense) security of raid5...


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 06 May 2012 13:47:59 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Sun, 06 May 2012 12:35:40 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Sun, 06 May 2012 12:18:33 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 If your hard disk capacity is ~1.5 TiB then you can get 3 partitions
 from there of ~500 GiB of size (e.g., sda1, sda2 and sda3). For a
 second disk, the same (e.g., sdb1, sdb2 and sdb3) and so on... or you
 can make smaller partitions. I would just care about the whole RAID
 volume size.
 
 Sorry I don't get it.
 
 Let's assume I have 4x 1.5 TB and 4x 2 TB.
 
 x4 1.5 TiB → sda, sdb, sdc, sdd
 x2 2 TiB → sde, sdf
 
 I divide each drive into 500 GB partitions. So three per 1.5 TB and
 four per 2 TB disk.
 
 1.5 TiB hard disks:
 
 sda1, sda2, sda3
 sdb1, sdb2, sdb3
 sdc1, sdc2, sdc3
 sdd1, sdd2, sdd3
 
 2 TiB hard disks:
 
 sde1, sde2, sde3, sde4
 sdf1, sdf2, sdf3, sdf4
 
 Then I put the 28 partitions (4x3 + 4x4) in a raid 6?
 
 Then you can pair/mix the partitions as you prefer (when using mdadm/
 linux raid, I mean). The layout (number of disks) and the raid level
 is up to you, I don't know what's your main goal.

The machine should be a NAS to store backups and serve multimedia content.

My point was that it doesn't make sense to me to put several partitions 
from the same hdd to the same raid.
Let's assume one of the 1.5 TB disks fails. Then I'd loose three 
partitions but the raid6 only able to stand two (I hope it's 
understandable what I mean).

So maybe I would have to make 500 GB partitions on each disk and put one 
partition per disk into a separate raid6s. E.g.:
md1: sda1, sdb1, sdc1, sdd1, sde1, sdf1
md2: sda2, sdb2, sdc2, sdd2, sde2, sdf2
md3: sda3, sdb3, sdc3, sdd3, sde3, sdf3
md4: sde4, sdf4

md4 could only be used if I add another partition from another disk. I 
could use 2/3 of the disks of md1-md3 and nothing from md4. In total 8/20 
of the space is used for parity.

When I now add another 1.5 TB disk the available space from md1-md3 
increases by 500 GB each. So now only 8/23 of the space is used for 
parity.

If I add a 2 TB disk *instead* of the 1.5 TB from before I can add a 
partition to each of the four of them and md4 becomes useful. This means 
I have even less parity than before (8/24).

If instead I even add a 3 TB disk, I will create md5 and md6. This lets 
the relative parity increase to 10/26. But when I then add another 3 TB 
disk the parity decreases to 10/32 which is already less than 8/20.


If in the initial setup one 1.5 TB disk fails (e.g. sda) and I replace it 
with a 2 TB disk I will get this:
md1: sda1, sdb1, sdc1, sdd1, sde1, sdf1
md2: sda2, sdb2, sdc2, sdd2, sde2, sdf2
md3: sda3, sdb3, sdc3, sdd3, sde3, sdf3
md4: sda4, sde4, sdf4
Which means that I now have 8/21 parity.


Since I already start with 2x 500 GB disks for the OS, 4x 1.5 TB and 4x 2 
TB I think this could be a good solution. I probably will add 3 TB disks 
if I will need more space or one disk fails: creating md5 and md6 :-)

Or is there something I'm missing?


And when I put all these array into a single LVM and one array goes down 
I will loose *all* the data?
But this won't like to happen because of the double parity, right?


 What I usually do is having a RAID 1 level for holding the operating
 system installation and RAID 5 level (my raid controller does not
 support raid 6) for holding data. But my numbers are very conservative
 (this was a 2005 setup featuring 2x 200 GiB SATA disks in RAID 1 and x4
 SATA disks of 400 GiB. which gives a 1.2 TiB volume).

You have drives of the same size in your raid.

Btw: Have you ever had to replace a disk. When I had the false positive I 
wanted to replace a Samsung disk with one of the same Samsung types and 
it had some sectors less. I used JFS for the md so was very happy that I 
could use the original drive and not have to magically scale the JFS 
down :-)


 Yet, despite the ridiculous size of the RAID 5 volume, when the array
 goes down it takes up to *half of a business day* to rebuild, that's why
 I wanted to note that managing big raid volumes can make things worse
 :-/

My 6 TB raid takes more than a day :-/


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 06 May 2012 15:40:50 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Sun, 06 May 2012 14:52:19 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Sun, 06 May 2012 13:47:59 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 Then I put the 28 partitions (4x3 + 4x4) in a raid 6?
 
 Then you can pair/mix the partitions as you prefer (when using mdadm/
 linux raid, I mean). The layout (number of disks) and the raid
 level is up to you, I don't know what's your main goal.
 
 The machine should be a NAS to store backups and serve multimedia
 content.
 
 Okay. And how much space are you planning to handle? Do you prefer a big
 pool to store data or you prefer using small chunks? And what about the
 future? Have you tought about expanding the storage capabilities in a
 near future? If yes, how it will be done?

My initial plan was to use 16 slots as raid5 with four disks per array. 
Then I wanted to use four slots as mythtv storage groups so the disks 
won't be in an array.
But now I'm quite fscinated with the 500 GB partitions raid6. It's very 
flexible. Maybe I'll have a harder time to set it up and won't be able to 
use hw raid which both you and Stan advice me to use...

snipped

 Since I already start with 2x 500 GB disks for the OS, 4x 1.5 TB and 4x
 2 TB I think this could be a good solution. I probably will add 3 TB
 disks if I will need more space or one disk fails: creating md5 and md6
 :-)
 
 Or is there something I'm missing?
 
 I can't really tell, my head is baffled with all that parities,
 partitions and raid volumes 8-)

Yes sorry. I even confused myself :-o


 What you can do, should you finally decide to go for a linux raid, is
 creating a virtual machine to simulate what will be your NAS environment
 and start testing the raid layout from there. This way, any error can be
 easily reverted with no other annoying side-effects :-)

That's a good point. I have played with KVM some time ago. This will be 
interesting :-)

snipped

 What I usually do is having a RAID 1 level for holding the operating
 system installation and RAID 5 level (my raid controller does not
 support raid 6) for holding data. But my numbers are very conservative
 (this was a 2005 setup featuring 2x 200 GiB SATA disks in RAID 1 and
 x4 SATA disks of 400 GiB. which gives a 1.2 TiB volume).
 
 You have drives of the same size in your raid.
 
 Yes, that's a limitation coming from the hardware raid controller.

Isn't this limitation coming from the raid idea itself?
You can't use disks with different sizes in a linux raid neither? Only if 
you divide them into same sized partitions?

(...)

 When I had the false positive I wanted to replace a Samsung disk with
 one of the same Samsung types and it had some sectors less. I used JFS
 for the md so was very happy that I could use the original drive and
 not have to magically scale the JFS down :-)
 
 I never bothered about replacing the drive. I knew the drive was in a
 good shape because otherwise the rebuilding operation couldn't have been
 done.

So you directly let the array rebuild to see if the disk is still ok?


 Yet, despite the ridiculous size of the RAID 5 volume, when the array
 goes down it takes up to *half of a business day* to rebuild, that's
 why I wanted to note that managing big raid volumes can make things
 worse :-/
 
 My 6 TB raid takes more than a day :-/
 
 That's something to consider. A software raid will use your CPU cycles
 and your RAM so you have to use a quite powerful computer if you want to
 get smooth results. OTOH, a hardware raid controller does the RAID I/O
 logical operations by its own so you completely rely on the card
 capabilities. In both cases, the hard disk bus will be the real
 bottleneck.

I have an i3 in that machine and 4 GB RAM. I'll see if this is enough 
when I have to rebuild all the arrays :-)


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 06 May 2012 18:10:41 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Sun, 06 May 2012 17:44:54 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Sun, 06 May 2012 15:40:50 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 Okay. And how much space are you planning to handle? Do you prefer a
 big pool to store data or you prefer using small chunks? And what
 about the future? Have you tought about expanding the storage
 capabilities in a near future? If yes, how it will be done?
 
 My initial plan was to use 16 slots as raid5 with four disks per array.
 Then I wanted to use four slots as mythtv storage groups so the disks
 won't be in an array.
 But now I'm quite fscinated with the 500 GB partitions raid6. It's very
 flexible. Maybe I'll have a harder time to set it up and won't be able
 to use hw raid which both you and Stan advice me to use...
 
 It's always nice to have many options and true is that linux softare
 raid is very pupular (the usual main problem for not using is when high
 performance is needed and when doing a dual-boot with Windows) :-)

Yes and I need neither of those things :-)


 You have drives of the same size in your raid.
 
 Yes, that's a limitation coming from the hardware raid controller.
 
 Isn't this limitation coming from the raid idea itself?
 
 Well, no, software raid does not impose such limit because you can work
 with partitions instead.
 
 In hardware raid I can use, for example, a 120 GiB disk with 200 GiB
 disk and make a RAID 1 level but the volume will be of just 120 GiB. (I
 lose 80 GiB. of space in addition to the 50% for the RAID 1 :-/).

But you can't build a linux software raid with a 100 GB and a 200 GB disk 
and then have 150 GB?


 You can't use disks with different sizes in a linux raid neither? Only
 if you divide them into same sized partitions?
 
 Yes, you can! In both, hardware raid and software raid. Linux raid even
 allows to use different disks (SATA+PATA) while I don't think it's
 recommended becasue of the bus speeds.

What I mean was the space difference is lost in either ways?


 I never bothered about replacing the drive. I knew the drive was in a
 good shape because otherwise the rebuilding operation couldn't have
 been done.
 
 So you directly let the array rebuild to see if the disk is still ok?
 
 Exactly, rebuilding starts automatically (that's a default setting, it
 is configurable). And rebuiling always ends with no problem with the
 same disk that went down. In my case this happens (→ the array going
 down) because of the poor quality hard disks that were not tagged as
 enterprise nor to be used for RAID layouts (they were plain Seagate
 Barracuda). I did not build the system so I have to care about that for
 the next time.

I'd like using green drives for this system. So low power consumption is 
a thing I try keep low. And until now they worked well (one false 
positive in two years is ok)


 My 6 TB raid takes more than a day :-/
 
 That's something to consider. A software raid will use your CPU cycles
 and your RAM so you have to use a quite powerful computer if you want
 to get smooth results. OTOH, a hardware raid controller does the RAID
 I/O logical operations by its own so you completely rely on the card
 capabilities. In both cases, the hard disk bus will be the real
 bottleneck.
 
 I have an i3 in that machine and 4 GB RAM. I'll see if this is enough
 when I have to rebuild all the arrays :-)
 
 Mmm... I'd consider adding more RAM (at least 8 GB) though I would
 prefer 16-32 GB) you have to feed your little big monster :-)

That much :-O

Ok, RAM is quite cheap and it shouldn't affect power consumption with in 
comparison to 20 hard disks.


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Fri, 04 May 2012 15:38:10 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Fri, 04 May 2012 10:48:36 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Thu, 03 May 2012 20:27:02 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 There's some useful information in one of the links I sent before:
 
 http://wiki.debian.org/LinuxRaidForAdmins
 
 Maybe I miss something but the page doesn't say anything about cli
 tools of the megaraid cards :-?
 
 Yes... no info is also info after all. Not the one you'd like to read
 but that's how it is :-). Anyway, the page can be simply outdated or
 lacking from that specific information.
 
 Also, the expanded information on the megaraid_sas driver points to
 the page you sent before:
 
 http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages
 
 Where you can find a set of tools for your driver (megaclisas-status
 and megacli) as well as more information about the LSI controllers and
 the driver status:
 
 http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/LSIMegaRAIDSAS
 
 Ufff, I was not aware of this:
 
 ***
 There is currently no known opensource tool for theses cards. ***
 
 How, how bad... in contrast, 3ware seems to fully support open source,
 or at least that's what it can be read here:
 
 http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/3Ware
 
 ***
 3Ware supports Linux and provide an opensource kernel driver which has
 been part of Linux for ages
 ***
 
 This is something to reconsider.

Yes, this is really not what I wanted to read :-o

So I think I'll just go for the LSI card and use mdadm. The 3Ware card I 
found at my dealer was twice the price of the LSI...


snipped

 Just an additional note. By reading the chosen card specs it seems it
 does not support a RAID 6 level (which is better than RAID 5 because
 it allows the failure 2 disks) so that can be a handycap.
 
 This should be no problem. I plan to use four slots without raid for
 mythtv.
 I already have a 4x 1.5 TB disks raid 5 and another 4x 2 TB disks raid
 5. When I want to add more disks I can e.g. go for 3 TB disks and set 4
 of them up as another raid5.
 Like this I can use disks with different sizes.
 
 Just a note of caution here.
 
 RAID 5 with big hard disks can be a real pain and a real problem. If one
 of the arrays go down, the rebuilding operation can take up to days
 (depending on the controller's capacity) and if while the RAID is
 rebuilding a second disk of the array is also down for whatever reason
 (it can be a false possitive) you can't recover your data, at least not
 that easily. That's why most people is switching from raid 5 to raid 6,
 it adds an extra of security with no remarkable drawbacks.

That's true.

On the other hand it isn't possible to have different disk sizes in a 
raid 6 neither.
So my plan seems still reasonable to me to have several 4 disks raid 5 
arrays. Like that I'm flexible to add bigger disks in future as they 
become cheaper and still can keep my old 1.5 TB disks.
And if I would go for raid 6 with the 4 disk array I would loose a third 
of the capacity.


 I'm thinking of combining the arrays then to a lvm... But I don't know
 if this is a good idea as it adds more complexity :-?
 
 Yes, it will be a good idea (it will allow you to manage your volumes in
 a more flexible manner) and yes, it will add an extra layer of
 complexity (RAID+LVM) :-)

Ok, hope it won't be too complicated :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 03 May 2012 20:27:02 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Thu, 03 May 2012 18:27:55 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Thu, 03 May 2012 16:30:00 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 snipped

 2/ The card's manufacturer provides a set of CLI tools (also GUI/web
 based) to control all of the aspects of the RAID volume (from array
 creation/modification/reconstruction/rebuilding/deletion/on-the-fly
 volume expansion/current array status... up to firmware update, if
 possible)
 
 Didn't find any infos about that :-?
 
 There's some useful information in one of the links I sent before:
 
 http://wiki.debian.org/LinuxRaidForAdmins

Maybe I miss something but the page doesn't say anything about cli tools 
of the megaraid cards :-?


 3/ The manufacturer is enough linux-friendly so that in the event of a
 problem you can contact them with no regrets :-)
 
 Hope I don't have to find out about that ;-)
 
 Bugs do exist also in good hardware, so better having a person over the
 wire that at least understands what you are talking about :-)

Thats absolutely true!

 
 Btw: Wouldn't it be better to use software raid? In case of failure of
 the controller I would need to get exactly the same card again? Or if I
 ever want to exchange the mainboard and use one with a SAS controller
 onboard?
 
 Some people prefer mdamd (linux raid) instead using a hardware raid
 card (it can be more flexible, yes) but IMO, a good raid card provides
 better performance and it's easier to manage than a software raid
 system.
 
 In case of disasterous raid failure you depend completely on the
 manufacturer and what are the option they can provide (although data
 recovery can be usually done at professional labs).

My data isn't so important that it would justify restoring it with 
professional help.

Still I have to do backups of the really important stuff to dvd or a 
seperate external drive...


 Thanks for all your help and advices! Ramon
 
 Just an additional note. By reading the chosen card specs it seems it
 does not support a RAID 6 level (which is better than RAID 5 because it
 allows the failure 2 disks) so that can be a handycap.

This should be no problem. I plan to use four slots without raid for 
mythtv.
I already have a 4x 1.5 TB disks raid 5 and another 4x 2 TB disks raid 5. 
When I want to add more disks I can e.g. go for 3 TB disks and set 4 of 
them up as another raid5.
Like this I can use disks with different sizes.

I'm thinking of combining the arrays then to a lvm...
But I don't know if this is a good idea as it adds more complexity :-?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Wed, 02 May 2012 17:49:53 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Wed, 02 May 2012 16:19:40 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Wed, 02 May 2012 14:21:36 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 Ah, okay. This one:
 
 http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/P67/C7P67.cfm
 
 The board has no SAS ports but it features 8 SATA ports (4 SATA2 and 4
 SATA3), aren't those enough your your purpose? :-?
 
 Yes, that's the mainboard I got.
 
 The case has two places to add os drives, one for a cdrom and 20 hot
 swapable disks.
 It was available with either SAS or SATA connectors. But I would have
 needed 23 SATA connectors on the mainboard or addon cards. The case
 with 5 SAS connectors was available and the SATA one had much later
 delivery date so I went for the SAS case.
 
 But you are still physically limited to the eight-ports provided by the
 add-on card, right? :-?

Well, I have two cards and eight sata ports on the mainboard. With a 
4xsata to sas cable I can connect another four hot swap drives and the os 
drives plus cdrom.
Until now I have four 2 TB and four 1.5 TB disks. But I wanted to be able 
to expand when I need more space.


 Well, I wonder why is that you chose to go with SAS drives instead
 using SATA given that the motehrboard only has SATA ports. When
 someone adds a SAS controller is usually because he/she wnats to build
 a mainstream server or expectes more performance/reliability than the
 average :-)
 
 Since I couldn't find any mainboards with more than 20 SATA ports and
 enough slots for addon cards (1x PCI, 2x PCI-Ex1 only for the tv
 cards).
 
 Okay, I didn't realize you were planning to use all of the available
 hard disk trays of the case :-)
 
 But then, you will need SAS controller with expansion capabilities,
 don't you? I maybe overlooked but the SuperMicro SAS controller you
 first pointed out does not seem to support more than 8 devices.

I have two of these cards. This makes 16 drives which can be attached to 
the controllers.


 Now I have one 500 GB disk as system drive but I'm thinking of adding
 another one as RAID1.
 
 This leads me to another question. Why RAID 1 for a media server?
 
 Just because the case has two places for os disks. But on the other
 hand it's seems to be interesting to set up a bootable raid1. And
 because it's calming to have the safety of the raid as it serves all
 the media I have: MythTV, LogitechMediaServer, etc. So my family relies
 on it and isn't amused when the system is down ;-)
 
 Okay :-)
 
 Just let me add a note of warning here: whatever SAS/SATA card you
 finally choose, ensure that has support for big hard disks (2-3TiB)
 just in case, because this information is not usually displayed on the
 specs.

Thanks for the warning. I will carefully check about the LSI 9240-4i and 
the Intel 6Gb SAS expander.

I was just googling for the LSI SAS 9240-4i. It seems as it uses the same 
chipset as the Intel expansion card (see post #5 in [1]).

They should be supported by the hwraid packages [2].

[1] http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037845618
[2] http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages

So I think this looks promising for the controller and expansion cards?


 Okay, let's see what we have for now:
 
 - A motherboard with 8 SATA ports
 - A 4U case with up to 20 hot-swap drive bays for the disks (SATA/SAS)
 
 I wonder why is that you have not considered using SATA hard disks :-)
 
 Besides the fact of the longer delivery because I couldn't find cheaper
 solution than the two Supermicro SAS cards. The rest of the disks and
 optical drive.
 
 Ah, so your plan was adding two of this eight-port SAS addon card to get
 a total of 16 hard disks.

Yes exactly :-)
But I should have searched infos more carefully :-?


 But in the meantime I have installed the bpo kernel and it seems to
 be working now...
 At least it never run the disk check for so long, the raid is
 rebuilding and I can see the details as much as I want...
 
 Glag it's more stable now with an updated kernel but I'd be keep
 monitoring the array during some days... and if you experience another
 issue with the disks, I would reconsider in replacing the hard disk
 controller or moving to SATA disks, instead.
 
 Thanks.
 I think I'll go with the solution Stan posted (LSI 9240-4i and Intel
 SAS expander).
 
 Mmm, yes. I can't tell for that specific model but LSI is a good
 manufacturer for HBA solutions and also linux-friendly, at least that's
 what I've heard :-)

Yes, I hope I won't have any problems with them. Especially because they 
too promise SuSE and Red Hat support but only have a Debian 5 driver on 
their homepage.

But since the hwraid page shows good support for MegaRAID cards I'm 
optimistic :-)


 But I'm confused about the two different versions too. lspci shows:
 
 (I'm copying the rest of the message here)
 
 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
 MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01)
 
 Well, lspci should display two different sets

Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 03 May 2012 16:30:00 +, Camaleón wrote:

snipped

 In brief, yes, that card seems one of those you can consider to be
 safe enough to don't have many problems :-P

This sounds very good :-)


 Mmm, yes. I can't tell for that specific model but LSI is a good
 manufacturer for HBA solutions and also linux-friendly, at least
 that's what I've heard :-)
 
 Yes, I hope I won't have any problems with them. Especially because
 they too promise SuSE and Red Hat support but only have a Debian 5
 driver on their homepage.
 
 But since the hwraid page shows good support for MegaRAID cards I'm
 optimistic :-)
 
 At this point, let me share my own experience with hardware RAID cards
 because not all that glitters is gold :-)
 
 This is an own-made list I did of things one should take into account
 for hardware RAID cards:
 
 1/ The driver is included in the kernel (you will avoid many problems)

This seems to be the case.


 2/ The card's manufacturer provides a set of CLI tools (also GUI/web
 based) to control all of the aspects of the RAID volume (from array
 creation/modification/reconstruction/rebuilding/deletion/on-the-fly
 volume expansion/current array status... up to firmware update, if
 possible)

Didn't find any infos about that :-?


 3/ The manufacturer is enough linux-friendly so that in the event of a
 problem you can contact them with no regrets :-)

Hope I don't have to find out about that ;-)

Btw: Wouldn't it be better to use software raid? In case of failure of 
the controller I would need to get exactly the same card again?
Or if I ever want to exchange the mainboard and use one with a SAS 
controller onboard?


 Mmm, yes, there's something strange there. Ah, I think I got it :-)

 $ sudo lspci | grep Marvel
 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
 MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01)
 
 This can be the motherboard SATA 2 controller.
 
 02:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
 MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01)
 
 This can be the SAS add-on card.
 
 I think they probably are the two SAS cards
 
 I also thought so, but it cannot be that way :-)
 
 (note the add-on card is SATA 2 -and thus 3 Gbps- while one of the
 embedded ports is rated at 6 Gbps and there's only one port listed that
 features the 6 Gbps speed)
 
 Does this make more sense? Yes, exact numbers do not match but this
 can be due to a simple identification problem (update-pciids could
 solve this).
 
 I did update-pciids but the numbers didn't change. But anyhow they are
 the same as on the debian wiki pci database. Or what numbers don't
 match?
 
 I wouldn't bother about that. Maybe is just the chipsets are still not
 listed at the upstream PCI ID database.

Ok, I already forgot :-)


Thanks for all your help and advices!
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 03 May 2012 12:21:17 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/2/2012 11:30 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 On Tue, 01 May 2012 15:43:13 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 
 On 5/1/2012 12:37 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:

 I have the RPC-4220 case with 20 howswap slots.

 You should have mentioned this sooner, as there is a better solution
 than buying 3 of the 9211-8i, which is $239*3= $717.  And you end up
 with one SFF8087 port wasted.

 Instead, get a 24 port Intel 6Gb SAS expander:
 http://www.provantage.com/intel-res2sv240~7ITSP0V8.htm $238.24

 and the LSI 9240-4i, same LSISAS2008 chip as the 9211-8i:
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118129
 $189.99

 Total:  $429

 W/4 extra SFF8087 cables (assuming you already have 2):
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116093 $60

 Total:  $489

 This solution connects all 20 drives on all 5 backplanes to the HBA,
 and will give you ~1.5GB/s read throughput with 20 7.2k RPM drives
 using md RAID 5/6, and ~800MB/s with hardware or md RAID10.

 You connect the SFF8087 of the LSI card to port 0 of the SAS
 exapander.
  You then connect the remaining 5 ports to the 5 SFF8087 ports on the
  5
 backplanes.
 
 Thanks alot for the suggestions. I have found a shop where I live and
 will order them tomorrow. Do you have experience with these cards?
 
 Hi Ramon,
 
 Yes.  Note that the Intel SAS expander has a PCIe x4 edge connector on
 the PCB and it also has a standard 4 pin Molex connector.  The PCB has
 mounting holes to allow mounting it directly to your chassis via
 motherboard style brass or plastic stand-offs.  This method may likely
 require drilling holes in your chassis.  I often use this method to
 avoid wasting a PCIe slot.  If you have plenty of free PCIe x4/8/16
 slots mount it in one as it's much easier.  Note only power is drawn
 from the PCIe slot.  There is no data xfer.  Data xfer occurs only via
 the SFF8087 ports.  Here's the manual:
 http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/
e93121003_res2sv240_hwug.pdf
 Nice picture and info:
 http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/servers/raid/raid-controller-
res2sv240.html
 
 Using the LSI 9240-4i HBA will be very similar to using the SuperMicro
 Marvell based SAS card, but better.  Simply enter the BIOS at boot and
 configure the drives as you wish.  This card is a real hardware RAID
 controller, not fakeraid, so you can use it as such.  It simply lacks
 cache memory and the more advanced RAID features of LSI's higher end
 RAID cards.  You can even install Debian onto and boot directly from a
 RAID volume on this card.  If you wish to use mdraid instead, configure
 the drives as JBOD so md can see the individual drives.
 
 If you choose to use the hardware RAID feature, note that you can have a
 maximum of 16 drives per RAID volume.  Thus, if you have 20 drives in
 that chassis, you'd want to create two RAID5 or two RAID10 volumes.  If
 you use a separate boot/OS drive, you can do two hardware RAID5 arrays,
 then create an md linear or RAID0 array of these two hardware volumes so
 you have a single file system across all the drives.  Lots of
 possibilities.  All the info you could want/need for the 9240 is here:
 http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/
MegaRAIDSAS9240-4i.aspx


Thank you very much for all the information and the suggestion of the 
cards.
I've just ordered them :-)

What would you suggest: Using the hardware raid functionality or use 
mdadm?
I already used mdadm for some time now and like the ability to change the 
arrays whilst the system is running. Can I do this with the hardware raid 
too?


Thanks again
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 03 May 2012 13:05:55 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

snipped

 His disks are fine.  The Marvell SAS driver is problem.  This is a
 thoroughly documented.  The mvsas driver is simply crap.

Something that the Supermicro support told me just came back into my mind 
and worries me: With the Norco RPC-4220 case I should use Enterprise 
grade disks.

Here's what they wrote:
 If the harddrives are Desktop grade then they cannot cope with the
 vibrations of a storage Server chassis nor 19 rack vibrations

But since I replaced all the ventilators with quiet ones that are mounted 
with some kind of rubber sticks instead of screws there shouldn't be much 
vibration. Or are the vibrating disks a problem?

Can I somehow observe how healthy they still are? Maybe with smartctl or 
something similar?

snipped

Thanks again for all the information!
Ramon



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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Wed, 02 May 2012 14:21:36 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Tue, 01 May 2012 17:29:17 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Tue, 01 May 2012 16:16:07 +, Camaleón wrote:
 
 What kind of hardware do you have (motherboard brand and model) and
 what kind of hard disk controller do you need, what are your
 expectations?
 
 SuperMicro boards (I'm also a SuperMicro user) are usually good enough
 to use their embedded SAS/SATA ports, at least if you want to use a
 software raid solution :-?
 
 I have a Supermicro C7P67 board. But there aren't any SAS connectors
 there.
 
 Ah, okay. This one:
 
 http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/P67/C7P67.cfm
 
 The board has no SAS ports but it features 8 SATA ports (4 SATA2 and 4
 SATA3), aren't those enough your your purpose? :-?

Yes, that's the mainboard I got.

The case has two places to add os drives, one for a cdrom and 20 hot 
swapable disks.
It was available with either SAS or SATA connectors. But I would have 
needed 23 SATA connectors on the mainboard or addon cards.
The case with 5 SAS connectors was available and the SATA one had much 
later delivery date so I went for the SAS case.



 This is a home media server. Earlier I used a debian box with a raid
 and a disk for mythtv recordings. But I ran out of space and
 resurrected an ReadyNas NV+. But this was so slow and I wanted to have
 everything centralized. So I was looking for something else and found
 this case:
 
 http://cybershop.ri-vier.nl/4u-rackmnt-server-case-w20-hotswap-satasas-
drv-bays-rpc4220-p-18.html
 
 They also had that SAS controller and on the Supermicro website they
 wrote it would be SUSE and Red Hat compatible. So I thought it runs too
 under Debian.
 
 Well, the driver status for most of the hardware out there can be
 misleading many times. This is like a double-sided sword, you have to
 carefully read the technical specs of the device to find out the chipset
 it uses and then, search for its status in the kernel. If you rely on
 hardware manufacturer's driver you are stuck: they can drop it at any
 time or don't compile for your linux distribution version, which seems
 to be this case :-(

Sounds very true :-(

 
 So performance isn't very important. But I don't know what exactly you
 mean by expectations.
 
 Well, I wonder why is that you chose to go with SAS drives instead using
 SATA given that the motehrboard only has SATA ports. When someone adds a
 SAS controller is usually because he/she wnats to build a mainstream
 server or expectes more performance/reliability than the average :-)

Since I couldn't find any mainboards with more than 20 SATA ports and 
enough slots for addon cards (1x PCI, 2x PCI-Ex1 only for the tv cards).


 The controller should give access to the disks. They will mostly be
 slow green drives. It's not even a very big problem if it's limited to
 3 TB but of course it would be nice if I could also go bigger in some
 years when I run out of space again and want to add another raid.
 
 Okay... I'll ask you again: why a SAS controller instead using the
 embedded SATA ports?

To be honest just because the case was ready at the dealer...


 So the media server contains one analogue PCI tuner card (PVR-500) and
 one (maybe in future a second one will be added) TeVii (S480) sat tuner
 card.
 
 Now I have one 500 GB disk as system drive but I'm thinking of adding
 another one as RAID1.
 
 This leads me to another question. Why RAID 1 for a media server?

Just because the case has two places for os disks. But on the other hand 
it's seems to be interesting to set up a bootable raid1. And because it's 
calming to have the safety of the raid as it serves all the media I have: 
MythTV, LogitechMediaServer, etc. So my family relies on it and isn't 
amused when the system is down ;-)


 With the 20 hot swap slots in the case, the two system drives and an
 optical drive I need 23 sata connectors. Or better four SAS connectors
 and the eight SATA ports on the mainboard.
 
 I think software raid will cause me less cost and problem because when
 the controller fails I can replace it by anything that can talk SAS?
 
 Okay, let's see what we have for now:
 
 - A motherboard with 8 SATA ports
 - A 4U case with up to 20 hot-swap drive bays for the disks (SATA/SAS)
 
 I wonder why is that you have not considered using SATA hard disks :-)

Besides the fact of the longer delivery because I couldn't find cheaper 
solution than the two Supermicro SAS cards. The rest of the disks and 
optical drive.



 Well, I'm not familiar with MD (I use hardware raid) but md1 stopped
 and raid 5 with only 2 elements in the array does not sound very good
 ;-(
 
 Ah, yes you're right :-o
 
 Was this during bootup? I recreated the array again after bootup...
 
 It could be...
 
 Ugh... and when is that happening, I mean, that I/O error? At
 install time, when partitioning, after the first boot?
 
 This usually happens when I tried to create the filesystem on the raid
 array by
 
 sudo mkfs.ext4

Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 15:43:13 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/1/2012 12:37 PM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 I have the RPC-4220 case with 20 howswap slots.
 
 You should have mentioned this sooner, as there is a better solution
 than buying 3 of the 9211-8i, which is $239*3= $717.  And you end up
 with one SFF8087 port wasted.
 
 Instead, get a 24 port Intel 6Gb SAS expander:
 http://www.provantage.com/intel-res2sv240~7ITSP0V8.htm $238.24
 
 and the LSI 9240-4i, same LSISAS2008 chip as the 9211-8i:
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118129 $189.99
 
 Total:  $429
 
 W/4 extra SFF8087 cables (assuming you already have 2):
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116093 $60
 
 Total:  $489
 
 This solution connects all 20 drives on all 5 backplanes to the HBA, and
 will give you ~1.5GB/s read throughput with 20 7.2k RPM drives using md
 RAID 5/6, and ~800MB/s with hardware or md RAID10.
 
 You connect the SFF8087 of the LSI card to port 0 of the SAS exapander.
  You then connect the remaining 5 ports to the 5 SFF8087 ports on the 5
 backplanes.

Thanks alot for the suggestions. I have found a shop where I live and 
will order them tomorrow. Do you have experience with these cards?


Best regards
Ramon


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Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I'm using Debian Squeeze and would like to use a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 
as controller for a software raid.
Unfortunately the system crashes when I try creating a filesystem on the 
md device.

Here's the full output of lshw:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=C900cBnN

The controller is listed in the Debian wiki PCI database:
PCI id: 11ab:6480
module (kernel2.6.26-1-686): mvsas
Vendor Name: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
Device Name: MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller
http://wiki.debian.org/DeviceDatabase/PCI


The module is loaded:
$ lsmod | grep mvsas
mvsas  36800  0 
libsas 35735  1 mvsas
scsi_transport_sas 19881  2 mvsas,libsas
scsi_mod  126789  6 
sg,sd_mod,mvsas,libsas,libata,scsi_transport_sas


And I can access the disks. Create an ext3 and ext4 filesystem on them 
seperately. But they don't like be be in the raid.

When the system crashed I got this dmesg but I can't find anything in 
there:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ZFdkcS8p

On the screen I saw this:
http://666k.com/u.php
(Sorry it's a photograph)


What else can I do?

There are Red Hat ad SUSE drivers and firmware on the Supermicro 
homepage. Should I take them from there?



Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 13:31:34 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Tue, 01 May 2012 11:53:27 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 I'm using Debian Squeeze and would like to use a Supermicro
 AOC-SASLP-MV8 as controller for a software raid. Unfortunately the
 system crashes when I try creating a filesystem on the md device.
 
 JFYI, Google reports tons of problems with that card using mvsas driver
 in linux, maybe you should consider using a different controller :-(

Thanks for your info.
I wasn't aware of that :-(

Can you recommend something better?
It was very nice because it's quite cheap and I don't need a hardware 
raid card.


 And I can access the disks. Create an ext3 and ext4 filesystem on them
 seperately. But they don't like be be in the raid.
 
 When the system crashed I got this dmesg but I can't find anything in
 there:
 http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ZFdkcS8p
 
 There are some interesting entries there:
 
 [   12.028337] md: md1 stopped.
 [   12.029374] md: bindsdc
 [   12.034155] md: bindsdd
 [   12.034275] md: bindsdb
 [   12.034986] raid5: device sdb operational as raid disk 0 [  
 12.034988] raid5: device sdc operational as raid disk 1 [   12.035246]
 raid5: allocated 3230kB for md1 [   12.035270] 0: w=1 pa=0 pr=3 m=1 a=2
 r=3 op1=0 op2=0 [   12.035272] 1: w=2 pa=0 pr=3 m=1 a=2 r=3 op1=0 op2=0
 [   12.035275] raid5: raid level 5 set md1 active with 2 out of 3
 devices, algorithm 2 [   12.035378] RAID5 conf printout:
 [   12.035380]  --- rd:3 wd:2
 [   12.035382]  disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb
 [   12.035383]  disk 1, o:1, dev:sdc
 [   12.035406] md1: detected capacity change from 0 to 4000794542080 [  
 12.035940] md1: unknown partition table
 
 Those are related to md1 and your raid5 volume.

And this looks ok or is there a problem?


 [   12.244499] PM: Starting manual resume from disk [   12.244502] PM:
 Resume from partition 8:3 [   12.244503] PM: Checking hibernation image.
 [   12.244599] PM: Error -22 checking image file [   12.244602] PM:
 Resume from disk failed.
 
 And this comes from a resuming operation. Do you hibernate your system?

No I don't. I usually do `sudo halt` to shut it off.
But maybe I pressed the power button of the case before I collected the 
dmesg report. But usually I don't hibernate.


 On the screen I saw this:
 http://666k.com/u.php
 (Sorry it's a photograph)
 
 I can't load the image :-?

Sorry I posted the wrong link. This one should work:

http://666kb.com/i/c3f6nbmalagytqujw.jpg


 What else can I do?
 
 I would report it, although I'm afraid this is a well-known issue.

Where should I report it?
I've written a mail to Supermicro. Should I also create a Debian bug 
report?


 Maybe you can try with an updated kernel to see if there's any
 imprevement with the driver (mvsas) but to be sincere, I would be very
 reluctant in setting a raid 5 level with a hard disk controller that is
 not rock-solid, you are exposing your system to a data loss :-/
 
 There are Red Hat ad SUSE drivers and firmware on the Supermicro
 homepage. Should I take them from there?
 
 Sadly, Supermicro does not build binaries for Debian/Ubuntu but maybe
 you can ask them for the sources to compile the driver by your own.

I found this pages:

ftp://ftp.supermicro.nl/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/SAS1/Driver/Linux/3.1.0.7/

But it doesn't seem as if it's what I need.

And the supermicro support sent me the link to this zip file:

ftp://ftp.supermicro.nl/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/SAS1/Firmware/3.1.0.21/
Firmware_3.1.0.21.zip

It contains some win files and I have no clue what to do with them. So I 
hope I get an answer from them what to do with it...


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 09:35:36 -0400, Allan Wind wrote:

 On 2012-05-01 11:53:27, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 I'm using Debian Squeeze and would like to use a Supermicro
 AOC-SASLP-MV8 as controller for a software raid.
 
 I have a different SuperMicro board and it can run in two different
 modes, forget their names for it, but one supports soft raid and the
 other does not (IT or something).  I needed to flash the firmware to use
 the latter, then use mdadm to configure a Linux soft array.

The supermicro support sent ma a link to a zip file which contains two 
exes a bat and a bin file:
ftp://ftp.supermicro.nl/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/SAS1/Firmware/3.1.0.21/
Firmware_3.1.0.21.zip

It contains

6480.bin
dos4gw.exe
mvf.exe
smc.bat

smc.bat contains
mvf 6480.bin –y

So I suppose I have to create a USB stick that boots DOS and then run one 
of the command. But which one. Maybe smc.bat but what is dos4gw.exe for?

Do you remember how you updated the firmware?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 14:54:24 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:

 Do you remember how you updated the firmware?

I have just got an answer from supermicro:

 You can create bootable USB stick with this utility  (windows only)
 http://download.softpedia.ro/dl/
f82c4af1fbe1f35565d91a87dedd9c5b/4e083d83/100081785/software/OTHERS/
BootFlashDos.zip

So I'l try Unetbootin and FreeDOS...



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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 16:16:07 +, Camaleón wrote:

 Can you recommend something better?
 It was very nice because it's quite cheap and I don't need a hardware
 raid card.
 
 Cheap and nice do not usually came together, or to put it well,
 cheap and good performance do not usually match :-)
 
 What kind of hardware do you have (motherboard brand and model) and what
 kind of hard disk controller do you need, what are your expectations?
 
 SuperMicro boards (I'm also a SuperMicro user) are usually good enough
 to use their embedded SAS/SATA ports, at least if you want to use a
 software raid solution :-?

I have a Supermicro C7P67 board. But there aren't any SAS connectors 
there.

This is a home media server. Earlier I used a debian box with a raid and 
a disk for mythtv recordings. But I ran out of space and resurrected an 
ReadyNas NV+. But this was so slow and I wanted to have everything 
centralized. So I was looking for something else and found this case:

http://cybershop.ri-vier.nl/4u-rackmnt-server-case-w20-hotswap-satasas-
drv-bays-rpc4220-p-18.html

They also had that SAS controller and on the Supermicro website they 
wrote it would be SUSE and Red Hat compatible. So I thought it runs too 
under Debian.

So performance isn't very important. But I don't know what exactly you 
mean by expectations. The controller should give access to the disks. 
They will mostly be slow green drives. It's not even a very big problem 
if it's limited to 3 TB but of course it would be nice if I could also go 
bigger in some years when I run out of space again and want to add 
another raid.

So the media server contains one analogue PCI tuner card (PVR-500) and 
one (maybe in future a second one will be added) TeVii (S480) sat tuner 
card.

Now I have one 500 GB disk as system drive but I'm thinking of adding 
another one as RAID1.
With the 20 hot swap slots in the case, the two system drives and an 
optical drive I need 23 sata connectors. Or better four SAS connectors 
and the eight SATA ports on the mainboard.

I think software raid will cause me less cost and problem because when 
the controller fails I can replace it by anything that can talk SAS?



 And I can access the disks. Create an ext3 and ext4 filesystem on
 them seperately. But they don't like be be in the raid.
 
 When the system crashed I got this dmesg but I can't find anything in
 there:
 http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ZFdkcS8p
 
 There are some interesting entries there:
 
 [   12.028337] md: md1 stopped.
 (...)
 [   12.035275] raid5: raid level 5 set md1 active with 2 out of 3
 devices, algorithm 2
 
 Those are related to md1 and your raid5 volume.
 
 And this looks ok or is there a problem?
 
 Well, I'm not familiar with MD (I use hardware raid) but md1 stopped
 and raid 5 with only 2 elements in the array does not sound very good
 ;-(

Ah, yes you're right :-o

Was this during bootup? I recreated the array again after bootup...



 On the screen I saw this:
 http://666k.com/u.php
 (Sorry it's a photograph)
 
 I can't load the image :-?
 
 Sorry I posted the wrong link. This one should work:
 
 http://666kb.com/i/c3f6nbmalagytqujw.jpg
 
 Ugh... and when is that happening, I mean, that I/O error? At install
 time, when partitioning, after the first boot?

This usually happens when I tried to create the filesystem on the raid 
array by

sudo mkfs.ext4 -c -L test-device-1 /dev/md1

And when I then want to see details about the array (sudo mdadm --detail /
dev/md1) the system crashes and I get the I/O error.

This causes so much problem that I wasn't able to repair it when it 
happened the first time (afterwards I had nothing to recover ;-) ).

I posted it here:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/04/msg01290.html


 What else can I do?
 
 I would report it, although I'm afraid this is a well-known issue.
 
 Where should I report it?
 
 I would try firt in Debian BTS, against the kernel package.
 
 I've written a mail to Supermicro. Should I also create a Debian bug
 report?
 
 Yup, tough I think it will be forwarded upstream.

Thanks I will run reportbug.

But in the meantime I have installed the bpo kernel and it seems to be 
working now...
At least it never run the disk check for so long, the raid is rebuilding 
and I can see the details as much as I want...



 Sadly, Supermicro does not build binaries for Debian/Ubuntu but maybe
 you can ask them for the sources to compile the driver by your own.
 
 I found this pages:
 
 ftp://ftp.supermicro.nl/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/SAS1/Driver/
Linux/3.1.0.7/
 
 But it doesn't seem as if it's what I need.
 
 Mmm, your addon card is based on Marvell 6480 chipset, those packages
 are for Marvell Odin(88SE64xx) as the README file says. Maybe you need
 to look here, instead:
 
 ftp://ftp.supermicro.nl/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/SAS2/
 
 But it doesn't matter because these are also rpm based packages.
 
 And the supermicro support sent me the link to this zip file:
 
 

Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 10:57:47 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 On 5/1/2012 6:53 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 Hi all
 
 I'm using Debian Squeeze and would like to use a Supermicro
 AOC-SASLP-MV8 as controller for a software raid.
 
 The mvsas Linux driver has never been ready for production, unless
 things have dramatically changed very recently.  The AOC-SASLP-MV8 will
 work fine on a MS Windows machine, but you will continue to suffer many
 nightmares with Linux.  Google for the mvsas horror stories.
 
 What else can I do?
 
 Ebay that card and acquire one that will simply work:
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118112 This LSI
 card supports 6Gb SAS/SATA3 and 3TB+ drives.

Thanks alot!


 If you have x4 PCIe slots but not x8/x16, then get the Intel card:
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816117141

Nono, I have enough x16 slots. The x4 slots aren't enough.


 
 People buy this SM card because it's the cheapest thing on the planet
 with 2xSFF8087 ports (without first looking up its reputation).  If the
 dual SFF8087 cards above are beyond your budget, go with 2 Silicon Image
 based 4 port cards with plain SATA connectors:
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124027
 
 If you don't have a backplane with SFF8087 connectors, simply use 4
 regular SATA cables with the SiI cards.  If you do have a backplane, buy
 2 new 4 port SATA to SFF8087 2ft reverse breakout cables:
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116101
 
 The LSI card is $239, will give far superior performance, and will work
 with your current cables.  The 2xSiI cards is $120, $154 w/cables.
 Either have great Linux compatibility.

Thanks you very much!!!

I have the RPC-4220 case with 20 howswap slots. So I can only go for the 
LSI card. But when this means no more such problems I'm more than 
happy :-)


Thanks again!



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Re: Supermicro SAS controller

[Ramon Hofer]

Sorry I hit ctrl + enter or something and the message went out...

On Tue, 01 May 2012 17:29:17 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:

 But I'm confused about the two different versions too. lspci shows:

01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 
MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01)



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RAID5 failure; possible to repair?

[Ramon Hofer]

Hi all

I have a home server with a raid5.
After switching to a new case my graphics card died and I replaced it 
with an old but very powerful card just to try things.

Unfortunately the PSU wasn't strong enough and there were some crashes.

I could fix the problems of the other disks but I had no luck with the 
raid.

What I did is:

First I checked with `mdadm --detail /dev/md0` and everything seemed fine 
(raid clean).
But it wasn't possible to mount md0 so I ran `fsck /dev/md0` which was 
busy for quite a while. It removed one disk after the other from the 
raid. Afterwards I ended with an empty raid with four spare disks and now 
I don't even have a md0 device.

Is there anything I can do to recover the files from there or should I 
start from scratch?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: RAID5 failure; possible to repair?

[Ramon Hofer]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:03:04 +0200, Daniel Koch wrote:

- Zero all the superblocks on all the disks. (mdadm --zero-superblock
/dev/sd{b..d})
- Recreate the array with the --assume-clean option. (mdadm
--create --verbose /dev/md0 --auto=yes --assume-clean --level=5
--raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd)
- Mark it possibly dirty with: mdadm --assemble /dev/md0
--update=resync
- Let it resync
- Mount it and see if it is restored

Thanks alot for your answer, Daniel.
I had four devices in the raid /dev/sd{b..e}1. So I did the this: 

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8BJXMqTV

I fear when I ran fsck yesterday it deleted the raid or the filesystem. 
It told me that it had some errors and will continue with three devices. 
Still in the progress it told me it will continue with two, then with one 
and in the end with zero. Then I ended up with the raid I mentioned in my 
first post with no discs but four spares.

fdisk tells me that md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table.
Can I try to repair the table?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Apt-pinning confusion

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:36:07 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:01:12 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:23:25 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
 
 On Ma, 27 mar 12, 12:07:08, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 Thanks for the explanation!
 So why didn't they just update the version that won't receive any
 updates?
 
 The new version changed ABI[1], which means all modules compiled
 against bpo.1 need to be recompiled for bpo.2.
 
 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface
 
 So the ABI is about the same as a module? Like the one I had to compile
 (jme.ko [1]) to get the network up?
 
 Mmm, not quite so although it shares the same essence.
 
 In brief, to my understanding, kernel ABI helps developers to keep track
 for module changes that need to be recompiled and thus avoiding to
 recompile them all. When that happens, it is exposed by incrementing the
 last number of the package (in this example, bpo.1 → bpo.2).

Thanks for your explanation!

Aha, so instead of recompiling the modules a new kernel version is 
installed and with it the modules.
I thought the module files could just be replaced when the kernel is 
updated...


 [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/02/msg02240.html
 
 Still I don't understand why that kernel update couldn't trigger the
 recompilation of the new modules.
 Maybe there's a reason why they are held separately?
 
 They are treated as two different packages because they are indeed two
 different packages providing different modules.
 
 What you need to keep the kernel package updated to the latest available
 version in the backports is the kernel metapackage (linux-image-686-
 pae), as this will trigger the most recent version.

Thanks alot!
I somehow missed that metapackage.


Thanks again
Ramon


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Re: Apt-pinning confusion

[Ramon Hofer]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:40:47 +, Camaleón wrote:

 On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:59:42 +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 14:07:41 +, Camaleón wrote:
  
 Btw what's the difference between linux-image-3.2.0-0.bpo.1-686-pae and
 linux-image-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-686-pae and why are both in the backports
 repos. I was looking at packages.debian.org but couldn't find any
 explenation. Is there a place where I could find more infos?
 
 AFAICT, the last number in .bpo.1/.bpo.2 indicates a revision. A
 higher number means is the latest one.
 
 More info:
 
 5.6.12 Version
 http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html

Thanks for the info!

I was just thinking if it would be better to switch from linux-
image-3.2.0-0.bpo.1-686-pae on another machine to linux-
image-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-686-pae?
But maybe the difference isn't immense so I probably shouldn't change the 
running system :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Apt-pinning confusion

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:00:55 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

 On Ma, 27 mar 12, 10:45:27, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 I was just thinking if it would be better to switch from linux-
 image-3.2.0-0.bpo.1-686-pae on another machine to linux-
 image-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-686-pae?
 But maybe the difference isn't immense so I probably shouldn't change
 the running system :-)
 
 The bpo.1 is likely to disappear from backports very soon and not
 receive any security support as of the point bpo.2 was uploaded (the
 Kernel Team can't support more than one version in backports).

Thanks for the explanation!
So why didn't they just update the version that won't receive any 
updates?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Apt-pinning confusion

[Ramon Hofer]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:23:25 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

 On Ma, 27 mar 12, 12:07:08, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 
 Thanks for the explanation!
 So why didn't they just update the version that won't receive any
 updates?
 
 The new version changed ABI[1], which means all modules compiled against
 bpo.1 need to be recompiled for bpo.2.
 
 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface

So the ABI is about the same as a module? Like the one I had to compile 
(jme.ko [1]) to get the network up?

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/02/msg02240.html

Still I don't understand why that kernel update couldn't trigger the 
recompilation of the new modules.
Maybe there's a reason why they are held separately?


Best regards
Ramon


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Re: Apt-pinning confusion

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:10:08 -0400, Rob Owens wrote:

 On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 12:15:10PM +, Ramon Hofer wrote:
 Hi all
 
 I'm trying to put the MythTV PVR XBMC version on my Shuttle box. I need
 a newer alsa version than the one from Squeeze because the stable
 version doesn't see the soundcard. So I wanted to install alsa from
 testing.
 And because I use a SSD I thought it would be a good idea to use the
 squeeze-backports kernel.
 
 It might make your life a little bit easier to forget about pinning and
 just put this in you /etc/apt/apt.conf file:
 
 APT::Default-Release stable;
 
 That will prevent your system from upgrading to Wheezy on you, but it'll
 allow you to install files from wheezy (provided wheezy is in your
 sources.list).

This makes it much easier.
Thanks alot for the tipp :-)


Best regards
Ramon


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