[ale] Compaq raid disk. How do I format?

[Jim Lynch]

Thanks, guys for your input.  I'm a bit constrained here.  The server is 
in California and I'm in GA.  The fellow (NT admin) that set up the raid 
config did the install of the disks and configured c0d2 as two 9 Gb 
disks mirrored.  I'd like to redo the whole thing, but I can't remotely 
and don't have anyone that understands both raid and linux at the site, 
so I'm stuck with what I've got.

On your advice I did go into fdisk and try to partition c0d2.  Strange 
thing happened.  I can't seem to create more than one partition.  I 
think the geometry is screwed up somehow. Note it would only let me 
start at block 1 and didn't ask me how large to make the partition.  It 
just grabbed it all. Any ideas how to fix that?

 /sbin/fdisk /dev/ida/c0d2

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/ida/c0d2: 1 heads, 17764320 sectors, 1 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 17764320 * 512 bytes

         Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-1, default 1):
Using default value 1

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/ida/c0d2: 1 heads, 17764320 sectors, 1 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 17764320 * 512 bytes

         Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/ida/c0d2p1             1         1   8882159+  83  Linux
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(768, 0, 32) logical=(0, 0, 17764320)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
     phys=(768, 0, 32) should be (768, 0, 17764320)

Command (m for help):


Jim Lynch wrote:

> I've have an old compaq that a Windows tech added some disks to but 
> had no idea what to do to make it work on Linux.  From the dmesg 
> listing I found:
>
> Compaq SMART2 Driver (v 2.4.5)
> Found 1 controller(s)
> cpqarray: Finding drives on ida0 (SMART-2/P)
> cpqarray ida/c0d0: blksz=512 nr_blks=8380320
> cpqarray ida/c0d1: blksz=512 nr_blks=16768800
> cpqarray ida/c0d2: blksz=512 nr_blks=17764320
>
> It looks like he added ida/c0d2 since I have the other two drives 
> mentioned in the fstab file.  When I tried to look at one of the 
> existing drives with fdisk I found:
> Disk /dev/ida/c0d1: 1 heads, 16768800 sectors, 1 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16768800 * 512 bytes
>
>         Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/ida/c0d1p1   *         1         1   2044064   82  Linux swap
> Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
>     phys=(0, 1, 1) logical=(0, 0, 33)
> Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
>     phys=(500, 254, 32) logical=(0, 0, 4088160)
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
>     phys=(500, 254, 32) should be (500, 0, 16768800)
> /dev/ida/c0d1p2             1         1    391680   83  Linux
> Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
>     phys=(501, 0, 1) logical=(0, 0, 4088161)
> Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
>     phys=(596, 254, 32) logical=(0, 0, 4871520)
> Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
>     phys=(596, 254, 32) should be (596, 0, 16768800)
> /dev/ida/c0d1p3             1         1    261120   83  Linux
> Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
>     phys=(597, 0, 1) logical=(0, 0, 4871521)
> Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
>     phys=(660, 254, 32) logical=(0, 0, 5393760)
> Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
>     phys=(660, 254, 32) should be (660, 0, 16768800)
> /dev/ida/c0d1p4             1         1   5687520    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
> Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
>     phys=(661, 0, 1) logical=(0, 0, 5393761)
> Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
>     phys=(1023, 254, 32) logical=(0, 0, 16768800)
> Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:
>     phys=(1023, 254, 32) should be (1023, 0, 16768800)
> /dev/ida/c0d1p5             1         1   5687504   83  Linux
>
> Which makes me a bit leary of using fdisk on these drives.  Most of 
> that output doesn't make sense to me.  Can anyone point me in the 
> right direction so I can learn how to format this new drive?  This is 
> a RH 7.2 system.  If I understand correctly this is a RAID system.  
> The new drive  is really 2 9 Gb drives configured as a mirror, so I 
> was told.  Is there some other utility I need to use to make sense of 
> the partitioning of the existing drives?
>
> Thanks,
> Jim.
>
>
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