# [SOLVED]AACRAID RAID5: twice the disks, but no more space!

## Havin_it

Hi,

I seem to have boobed here. I have a Dell Poweredge 2400 server with a PERC2/Si RAID controller (aacraid driver) which I manage using the afacli tool. The system came with three drives in RAID5, and I later added another 3-drive array with same-size drives. Today I decided to merge the two arrays, so I deleted the second array container and added the three freed drives to the original container.

The operation went OK, but it's left me with a container the same size as the original, but striped over all six drives - thus leaving me with three drives' worth of free space that I now can't access.

Looking at the afacli manual here, I don't see any commands that can remedy this situation. The command I used to get to this stage was "container reconfigure" which, from its description, I assumed would add the space on the added drives to the array (obviously not).

I'm worried that the only way I can now resolve this will be to start from scratch by making a new container, but that presents its own challenges because the box is headless and getting a monitor and keyboard on it is very difficult.

Hoping someone can suggest a less-radical solution, or at least a sane way of backing-up and replacing my system ideally without needing a monitor.Last edited by Havin_it on Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Mad Merlin

The PE2400 appears to be quite an old machine, Pentium 3 based... wow! I'm still not sure if it supports IPMI though, but if it does, you can normally redirect the BIOS/bootup/serial console over the network and then manage it headlessly (and remotely). Unfortunately, if you didn't set this up already in the BIOS, you might be out of luck as far as fully remote management goes.

Barring that, if booting from livecd or via PXE is an option, then you should be able to do that, copy everything off of the machine, fiddle the arrays from the live environment, copy everything back, then reboot and hope for the best.

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## Havin_it

Haha, yep it's an old war-horse - I got it second-hand a few years ago, but it's still in good shape for my needs (though it makes quite a racket which my other half doesn't like too much!).

I don't remember seeing anything about IPMI in the BIOS - Dell's management tools for it are mostly for WinNT, and some RPMs for RHEL3/4, so all I've really had that I could use were the pre-boot RAID configurator and good old cranky afacli.

I could use a livecd, but I'd probably need to remaster one so it included an automatic sshd, afacli and something like partimage to back-up the contents. Does Gentoo have anything for building a lived based on your existing install? That would be handy.

With a sinking feeling, I'm starting to conclude that putting a head on the box will be necessary one way or another. In the meantime, any other suggestions are still welcome.

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## Mad Merlin

You could try installing ipmitool and openipmi and see what happens... I'm guessing it won't have IPMI though.

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## Havin_it

Finally all recovered now, after waiting until m'other half was out and poggling the TV and digging out the keyboard for some hands-on maintenance. There really was no easy solution, as even when I got into the RAID firmware, it wouldn't let me "grow" the array in-place. (As for IPMI, I looked in the BIOS and I don't think there's any support.)

So, I had to burn a System Rescue CD and use partimage to back up the old partitions, then go back to the firmware configurator and create a new array (which also took quite a while), then restore - a full day's work, albeit mostly waiting for progress-bars :S

Sidenote: something a bit frustrating that added to the time this took was a partimage version mismatch between the current sysresccd and my (~arch) laptop on which I intended to run partimaged. Even though sysresccd is Gentoo-based, its partimage is newer than the latest one in portage! Luckily I found a suitable ebuild in an unofficial overlay and was soon back in business.

Other sidenote: I almost fainted when, after restoring the root partition into its new larger home, it was still the same size when mounted!  After further hair-pulling, I found the solution.

The moral: When trying new things with a not-very-well-documented RAID controller, be sure to wring every case-study you can find out of Google before you set to work  :Wink: 

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