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RAID and clonezilla

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dens
2007-09-29
2013-04-05
  • dens

    dens - 2007-09-29

    I was not able to make any kind of backup (image) on one PC that is equipped with Fasttrak raid controller, and was set to RAID0 (span).

    I was getting messages that chkdsk/f should be executed and PC rebooted twice (complaints about ntfs). Of course, that suggestion did not improve situation...

    Since the raid is set as SPAN that makes total disk size of 500GB and methods like dd even with compression are not acceptable.

    Question is: does clonezilla supports raid 0 configurations (hW controller)?

    P.S. GParted was not able to see any partition...

     
    • Steven Shiau

      Steven Shiau - 2007-10-13

      OOps... Something went wrong with the "monitor this forum" function in my sf account. I did not get any notification about this. Sorry for the late response.

      About your question,
      Actually we do not have many experience about clonezilla with RAID. Therefore, to be honest, I am not sure it will or not. However, since you mentioned gparted is not able  to see any partition. I wonder clonezilla will... How about if you run such a command in clonezilla live:
      cat /proc/partitions
      and
      parted -s /dev/hda print (replace /dev/hda with yours)
      What's the results ?

       
      • Anonymous

        Anonymous - 2008-01-25

        While it is true that Clonezilla does not support AHCI RAID devices, it is possible if the Linux kernel on which it runs loads the ahci and dm_* modules.

        Prior to, if I recall correctly, kernel version 2.6.14-ish, a proprietary driver is required. In my case, the Adaptec adpahci driver is required for RHEL 3 and 4 on an HP Proliant DL320 G4 and presents the RAID device as /dev/sda. Otherwise, each drive would be presented independently as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.

        The situation is quite different in RHEL 5 with the new ahci and dm_* modules. The RAID device now appears as /dev/mapper/ddf1_LABEL, where LABEL is defined in the SATA FW for each group. (This is also true in Fedora 7 and 8.) The nash script 'init' in the initrd reveals an example of how the device is configured during boot. In the general case, this can be done from a DRBL terminal with the following bash script:

        #!/bin/bash
        set -e -x
        dmtmp=$(mktemp -t)
        nashtmp=$(mktemp -t)
        trap 'unlink ${dmtmp}; unlink ${nashtmp}' EXIT
        dmraid -vtpay > ${dmtmp}
        test -s ${dmtmp}
        cat ${dmtmp} >&2
        labels=()
        while read label args ; do
          case "${label}" in
          (ddf1_*:)
            label=${label%:}
            labels+=(${label})
            for arg in ${args} ; do
              case "${arg}" in
              (/dev/*) echo "rmparts ${arg#/dev/}" ;;
              esac
            done
            echo "dm create ${label} ${args}"
            echo "dm partadd ${label}"
            ;;
          esac
        done < ${dmtmp} > ${nashtmp}
        test -s ${nashtmp}
        cat ${nashtmp} >&2
        nash ${nashtmp}
        for label in ${labels[@]} ; do
          test -b /dev/mapper/${label} || continue
          sfdisk -dG /dev/mapper/${label}
        done

        So what was sda? and sdb? is now mapper/ddf1_LABELp?.

        I've been working to integrate this into Clonezilla privately and will submit working copies in due course.

         
        • Steven Shiau

          Steven Shiau - 2008-01-31

          Xan,
          Thanks for sharing that with us. When you finish that, please email me at <steven _at_ nchc org tw>.
          Appreciate that.

           
    • dens

      dens - 2007-10-29

      Hi, thanks for your answer...
      I'll try suggested commands, as soon as i get to the PC where i tried RAID and Clonezilla in a first place.

      Regards,

       
    • dens

      dens - 2007-12-09

      In the mean time i had a chance to test and use Clonezilla on two servers with raid 1 configurations.

      First was HP server and a second an IBM server.

      With HP i was able to save both disks (from raid, Clonezilla offered me two source disks) and restore (checked both on restore operation). After reboot, i was able to boot and use Windows that was on the server, but raid was somehow broken... i had to rebuild it using controller's tools.

      Anyway, conclusion was that saving one disk from raid was enough and only working solution. Rebuild of raid 1 needed, but image restored perfectly.

      On second server, Clonezilla offered only one disk which i had saved with no problem. After restore operation, both disk in raid 1 were in sync, so that was the best behaving raid so far...

      I did not try to restore image on broken raid (one of disk out of sync).

      I'll try soon again with server that made me ask for help in a first place. That was the server with raid 0 that Clonezilla could not see at all...

      Regards,

       
      • Steven Shiau

        Steven Shiau - 2007-12-11

        Thanks for sharing your RAID clone results with us. Here we do not have too much experience about RAID card, since we do not use here. We will try to borrow the RAID card and do some test.
        BTW, could you please tell me the results when you run "cat /proc/partitions" in clonezilla live with those RAID cards ?
        Thanks in advance.

         
    • dens

      dens - 2007-12-12

      First i have to download new version and burn a CD.

      As soon as i find some spare time, i will check this new version against RAID.

      I have HP Proliant DL 320 server and will try with it first.

      Best regards,

       
    • dens

      dens - 2007-12-13

      Hi...

      here are the listing(s)produced by above mentioned commands.
      Server is HP DL320, with 2 disks in RAID1 configuration. Disks are in sync.

      1. Parted command:
      Disk /dev/sda: 80.0GB
      Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
      Partition Table: msdos

      Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
      1      32.3kB  2097MB  2097MB  primary  ntfs             
      2      2097MB  80.0GB  77.9GB  primary  ntfs         boot

      2. cat /proc/part....
      major minor  #blocks  name

         8     0   78150744 sda
         8     1    2048256 sda1
         8     2   76035645 sda2
         8    16   78150744 sdb
         8    17    2048256 sdb1
         8    18   76035645 sdb2
         8    32  312571224 sdc
         8    33  156280288 sdc1
         8    34  156288352 sdc2
         7     0      77244 loop0

      The sdc disk is USB external device i am using for backup purposes (sdc2 mounted for backup image). It is divided into 2 partitions of 150GB each, NTFS.

      So every time ntfs-3g is being used :)

      Regards,

       
      • Steven Shiau

        Steven Shiau - 2007-12-19

        So you mean this /dev/sda is RAID and it's still have problem with Clonezilla live ?

         

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