Support for firmware RAID
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#312 Support for firmware RAID
Would it be possible to add support for firmware RAID devices? In this case I have an Intel RST RAID 1 which appears in /dev/mapper. After running kpartx -a I am able to mount the partition successfully, but ocs-sr restoredisk says it's an unknown hard drive device and terminates.
Which version of Clonezilla live did you try? Could you please describe the whole steps you have done, and the error messages on the screen? It's better to take some photos and post them. Thanks.
Steven
I'm using Clonezilla 2.6.0-37. In the BIOS, I configure Intel RST as RAID 1 called Volume0.
I boot to the shell with Clonezilla live, configure my network interface, mount my NFS share, then run
ocs-sr -g auto -e1 auto -e2 -r -j2 -c -scr -p choose restoredisk Ubuntu_AAF /dev/mapper/isw_iafgiffdf_Volume0. Photo attached.Note: When Clonezilla first starts, I get this error, but I just ignore it and I think this is unrelated:
Error: attempt to read or write outside of disk hd0
Last edit: Elliott 2019-01-18
Did you try to use the normal Clonezilla dialog wizard to save and restore? That is, run: sudo clonezilla
Any differences?
Thanks.
Steven
Yes I tried the GUI first. It does not show the RAID set, it only shows each member disk separately. So I created the image using just one member as the source. I am able to restore the image to one member successfully, but then Intel RST shows the second disk as no longer part of the RAID set. After I add it using the BIOS, the OS no longer boots. I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 by the way.
From what I've read online, Clonezilla does not support Intel RST (Fake RAID), so that's why I filed this as a feature request. Do you think this is supposed to be supported already?
It was not well tested and supported, IIRC, the mapping device name for FakeRAID like /dev/md126 is supported.
Steven
Ah, so it sounds you like you support DM RAID, not MD RAID. That makes sense, because MD RAID is the newer method. So then the issue is, how do I get the kernel to recognize this RAID set using mdadm instead of dmraid? If I boot with "nodmraid" kernel option, it prevents the /dev/mapper/ist device from being created, but it also does not show anything in /dev/md0. I think that if I can get the RAID set assembled as /dev/md0 using mdadm then Clonezilla might be able to use it.
I made some progress. Boot with "nodmraid", then run
mdadm --assemble --scanand it creates two devices /dev/md126 and /dev/md127. Now these disks appear in Clonezilla, but I can't use it as a source, it says "No input device!" I don't know why there are two, results are strange seel output below from fdisk and mdadm.fdisk shows that this device has only one partition. It's missing the EFI partition. I have read that when booting from a RAID 1, the EFI partition should only be on one of the drives. So I'm not sure how to handle this. Clonezilla would have to be smart enough to recognize the source as a bootable RAID1 with an EFI partition, then recognize whether the destination is also a RAID1, then write the EFI and other partitions accordingly.
To explain the long fdisk output, this system has an 8TB hardware RAID0, two 240GB SSDs in fake RAID1 booting Ubuntu, a 512GB SSD booting CentOS, and a 32GB stick running Clonezilla.
fdisk -l
** mdadm --detail /dev/md126**
** mdadm --detail /dev/md127**
mdadm --examine /dev/md126
mdadm --examine /dev/md127
Last edit: Elliott 2019-01-18
Could you please show the result of this command:
cat /proc/partitions
Thanks.
Steven
cat /proc/partitions
I have to find a machine with fake RAID card to test this. However, this is not easy to implement in Clonezilla.
Steven