Topic: Drive being dropped from RAID after reboot

[junrau]

I have searched the forums and haven't found anything that describes my problem.

I have a 20 GB PATA drive that I am booting from.  I installed an 80 GB SATA drive.  In the admin console, I use "Manage Disk Redundancy" to mirror the drives.  It syncs up with no problems.  When I reboot, the new 80 GB drive is no longer in the array and I get DegradedArray emails for both md1 and md2.  I go back to the admin console, and it does not report any errors - it just says I have a free drive.  I add the new drive to the array and it syncs up fine.  When I reboot, the same thing happens.

If I shutdown the machine and remove the 20 GB drive, it cannot boot from the 80 GB drive - "Kernel panic -tried to kill init" or something like that, I'm not looking at it right now.

Any ideas?

[brianr]

That sounds to me like the 80gb drive is faulty in some way.

Can you run the manufacturers diagnostics on it? usually using a downloadable image which is blown to a CD then boot from it.

[idp_qbn]

Apart from the possibility that the 80 SATA drive may be faulty, there is another problem.
If you have a mixed PATA and SATA combination, the SME will only boot from the drive that was originally installed. There is a fix (I had to do this about 2 years ago) but I can't remember it and can't find it on the forum.
The problem is something to do with PATA drives are hda (hda 1, hda2) etc, while SATA are sda (sda1, sda2) etc and there is a script that needs to be modified if you want the system to boot from the SATA drive.

In the end, it probably is easier to do a backup of your original system, re-install using SATA disks (preferably not the dodgy one) and do a restore.
Good luck
Ian

[janet]

Or just follow the Upgrade from disk Howto, to do a same version OS Restore.

[slords]

The issue is most likely because you don't have the driver for the sata controller in your initrd file.  The raid gets started as part of the initrd and if it can't find the controller (and thus the drives) then it thinks they are no longer available to the system.  As such it starts the raid without them and the arrays are then degraded.  After the OS finishes booting and the sata controller is available you can then see the drive and add it back into the array.

[CharlieBrady]

The issue is most likely because you don't have the driver for the sata controller in your initrd file.

And the solution is to rebuild the initrd file.

mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

should be sufficient, I think.

[Stefano]

And the solution is to rebuild the initrd file.

mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

should be sufficient, I think.

yes, it is, but before invoking mkinitrd, OP must delete/rename current /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img file

just my 2c

[CharlieBrady]

yes, it is, but before invoking mkinitrd, OP must delete/rename current /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img file

Not when the "-f" flag is used.

[Stefano]

Not when the "-f" flag is used.

sorry, I'm blind

[junrau]

Well, none of the help provided worked.  I finally fixed the issue by going into the BIOS of the machine (HP xw6400) and setting the SATA controller to emulate IDE channels.  Now, everything works fine.