# 4.5TB, Raid6, Ext3/Reiserfs, GPT - weird partition errors

## questionaire

hi there,

i got a new storage system in my datacenter and, of course, the host system should be gentoo.

Installed everything, raid configured as raid6, 1 partiton with 4.5TB (/dev/sda1), GPT label and reiserfs as filesystem.

everything fine: mounting can be done.

=> reboot

/dev/sda1 cant be mounted, superblock not found or not valid

raid check: controller fine, hdds fine

deleted partition, installed ext3 as filesystem.

everything fine: mounting can be done.

=> reboot

/dev/sda1 cant be mounted, superblock not found or not valid.

=> confused

=> booting into rescue system (debian 64)

deleted partition, installed ext3 fs

everything fine: mounting can be done

=> reboot again into rescue system

everything fine  :Surprised: 

=> reboot into gentoo

/dev/sda1 cant be mounted, superblock not found or not valid.

=> reboot into rescue system

everything fine   :Evil or Very Mad: 

Do you have any ideas? I'm really getting angry here. Without reboot everything runs fine and i can use my 4.5TB - after reboot everything is corruted - except i boot into a non gentoo os.

Kernel: configured with genkernel

ls -la /usr/src/linux

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 May  3 12:08 /usr/src/linux -> linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r4

completely new (2 days ago) installed gentoo, all packets new

----------

## NeddySeagoon

questionaire,

It sounds like your kernel is missing gps support, the driver for your raid card or something else essential to getting started.

Please post your lspci output, so we can see your hardware.

Sight of your grub.conf would be useful as would the exact full text of the error message you get.

Please include your partition layout, showning what partition is for what purpose.

----------

## questionaire

first of all the infos you wanted:

 *Quote:*   

> ~ # lspci 
> 
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge
> 
> 00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M890 Host Bridge
> ...

 

 *Quote:*   

> ~ # cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
> 
> default 0
> 
> timeout 1
> ...

 

 *Quote:*   

> ~ # mount /dev/sda1 /data
> 
> mount: you must specify the filesystem type
> 
> ~ # mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /data
> ...

 

if you want reiserfs message i would need to recreate the fs as reiserfs - this takes 30 minutes with 4.5TB  :Wink:  hope ext3 fits your needs

 *Quote:*   

>  ~ # fdisk /dev/sdb
> 
> The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 9729.
> 
> There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
> ...

 

partition layout for OS hd

 *Quote:*   

> ~ # parted /dev/sda print
> 
> Model: AMCC 9650SE-8LP DISK (scsi)
> 
> Disk /dev/sda: 4500GB
> ...

 

partition layout for data raid6 volume

hope those informations are fine for you.

now to my statement: why should kernel mis the gps support? i mean without gps support it wouldn't be possible to mount it at all, right? and it works fine until i reboot - or am i missing something?

----------

## your_WooDness

Hi,

I think the problem is the grub entry "root (hd0,0) which I think is the 3ware RAID and where grub can't find the kernel image kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r4. 

It looks like you have /dev/sdb1 as a seperate partition for /boot. If yes, please the following grub.conf to access the kernel image.

```

default 0

timeout 1

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.24-gentoo-r4

root (hd1,2)

kernel (hd1.0)/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r4 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sdb3 udev doscsi

initrd (hd1,0)/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r4 

```

WooD

----------

## questionaire

hi wood,

it finds the kernel image, otherwise the server couldnt boot.

this grub config is a little bit weird, i totally agree on that.

i'm installing bootloader on /dev/sdb using hd(1,0) and after grub-install i change it back to hd(0,0), because grub changes in the boot process the devices.

weird, but it works

----------

## bradp_84

 *questionaire wrote:*   

> ~ # dmesg | tail
> 
>  [<c0103d5a>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0x85
> 
>  [<c04a0000>] __svc_create+0x121/0x198
> ...

 

What about the oops in dmesg. Could you post your entire dmesg?

Cheers,

Brad

----------

## questionaire

solved it!

found some very interesting posts on ubuntu forums where the official parted in the portage is broken - so i started debugging.

using a primary partition on the 4.5TB raid with 4.5TB of space, ext3 as fs.

before reboot:

 *Quote:*   

> misc # ./findsuper /dev/sda
> 
> starting at 0, with 512 byte increments
> 
> byte_offset  byte_start     byte_end  fs_blocks blksz  grp  last_mount_time           sb_uuid label
> ...

 

after reboot:

 *Quote:*   

> misc # ./findsuper /dev/sda
> 
> starting at 0, with 512 byte increments
> 
> byte_offset  byte_start     byte_end  fs_blocks blksz  grp  last_mount_time           sb_uuid label
> ...

 

so i came to the point that the gpt is being corrupted. after another hour of googeling i found a very interesting maillist discussion: http://osdir.com/ml/file-systems.ext3.user/2005-11/msg00018.html

i read the entire mails and found something out: why using a primary partiton when it covers the whole device?

so i removed the partition, only labeled it to gpt and made the entire device ext3.

before and after reboot it worked without any problems!

the only question that is open for me now: bug in parted?

----------

