On 5/10/2013 7:44 AM, mashtin.bakir@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks for your reply. When I run the identical commands on the otherwise

We need to get on the same page here, using the same terminology.

What commands?  Are you referring to Linux commands or Promise RAID GUI
commands?  There are no Linux commands that you would execute WRT an
external hardware RAID device.

identical raid, stripes do get created and retained. 

Please explain what you mean by "stripes do get created and retained".
Define "stripe" in this context.  Is this a term Promise uses in their
documentation?  I've used many brands of hardware RAID/SAN devices but
not Promise, which is pretty low end gear.

In industry standard parlance/jargon, with hardware RAID units, one
creates a RAID set consisting of a number of physical disks, a RAID
level, and a strip/chunk size.  One then creates one or more of what are
typically called logical drives or virtual drives which are portions
carved out of the RAID set capacity.  Then one assigns a LUN to each of
these logical/virtual drives and exports the LUN through one or more
external interfaces, be they SAS/SATA, fiber channel, or iSCSI.

But just to eliminate the
possibility, I re-created a couple of stripes without setting the raid flag and
once again, when the raid chassis was rebooted, they disappeared. 

Why are you rebooting the RAID box?  That should never be necessary but
possibly after a firmware upgrade.  This sounds like a SCSI hot plug
issue.  You said this is with RHEL 5 correct?  Is your support contract
with Red Hat still active?  If so I'd definitely talk to them about
this.  If not, I'll do the best I can to assist.

I'm
thinking at this point that it's a hardware problem with the RAID controller.
Does that sound likely?

It's possible, but the problem you're describing doesn't appear to be
hardware related, not in absence of errors in dmesg.  You've provided
none so I assume there are none.  It sounds like a GPT problem.
Eliminating the RAID flag should have fixed it.  Keep in mind my ability
to assist is limited by the quantity, accuracy, and relevance of the
information you provide.  Thus far you're "telling" us what appears to
be wrong but you're not "showing" us.  I.e. logs, partition tables, etc.

To eliminate possible partition issues as the cause of your problem,
directly format a LUN that has no partitions associated with it.  If you
do this by reusing a LUN that has already been partitioned, delete the
partitions first.  It is preferably to us a clean LUN though to
eliminate partitioning completely from the test.

-- 
Stan

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 3:55 AM, Stan Hoeppner [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On 5/9/2013 6:29 AM, mashtin.bakir@gmail.com wrote:

quoted

I have an interesting problem with a Vessraid 1830s.
We have a few of these that work fine but one seems
to lose its filesets. The only difference between the
good ones and the bad one is that the bad one has firmware
version 3.06 while the good ones are at 3.05 (This may
not be relevant).

It's not a firmware problem Mashtin.  The problem here is incomplete
education.  More accurately, the problem is that you've confused
concepts of hardware RAID and Linux software RAID.  I will attempt to
help you separate these so you understand the line in the sand
separating the two.

quoted

Here's what happens. If I plug the raid into a 32 bit
RHEL5 box with large files enabled, syslog does pick
it up:

kernel: Vendor: Promise  Model:VessRAID 1830s Rev: 0306
Type: Direct-Access     ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdc:2929686528 2048-byte hdwr sectors (5999998 MB)

The kernel sees a single 6TB SCSI device/LUN presented by the Promise
array..

quoted

Using the web gui, I can carve out partitions,

The Promise web gui doesn't create partitions.  That's the job of the
operating system.  What it does allow you to do is carve out multiple
virtual drives from a single RAID set and export them as individual LUNs.

quoted

I make three stripes across 4 disks of 2Terabytes each
using RAID5.

This is not possible with the Promise firmware.  I think you're simply
using incorrect terminology here.  According to your dmesg output above
you have created a single hardware RAID5 array of 4 disks, one 6TB
virtual drive, and exported it as a single LUN.

...

quoted

I then use gnu-parted (v3.1) to make the
filesets:

parted doesn't create "filesets".  It creates partitions.  What are
"filesets"?

quoted

mklabel gpt
mkpart primray 0 0

Ok so you created a primary partition.

quoted

set 1 raid on

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

THIS IS THE PROBLEM.  "set 1 raid on" is used exclusively with Linux
software RAID.  What this does is tell the Kernel to look for a software
RAID superblock on the partition and auto start the array.  You are not
using md/RAID, but hardware RAID, so the superblock doesn't exist.  This
is the source of your problem.  This is where you have confused hardware
and software RAID concepts.

quoted

I create the fileset using

Ok so when you say "fileset" you actually mean "file system".

quoted

mkfs.ext3 -m0 /dev/sdc1
I can then mount the FS and write to it.

If I either reboot the RAID or the host, the FS disappears
ie cat/proc/partitions   shows only sdc, not sdc1.
If I go back into parted, the label is intact
But I can't even mkfs without re-creating the label/partition,
in wich case I get:

This is a direct result of "set 1 raid on" as explained above.  You
should see other error messages in dmesg about no superblock being found.

quoted

...Have been written, but we have been
unable to
inform the kernel of the change, probably because it/they are in use.  As a
result, the old partition(s) will remain in use.  You should reboot now
before
making further changes.
Ignore/Cancel? i

Clearing the parted RAID flag on the partition should fix your problem,
assuming you haven't done anything else wonky WRT software RAID and this
partition that hasn't been presented here.

Always remember this:  Any time your see "RAID" setup or configuration
referenced in Linux documentation or cheat sheets on the web, it is
invariably referring to a kernel software function, either md/RAID,
dm-raid, etc.  It is never referring to hardware RAID devices.  If you
have a hardware RAID device you will never configure anything RAID
related in Linux, whether it be parted, grub, md, dm, etc.

--
Stan

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html