mounting a scsi disk fails with unknown filesystem error
 

Thanks all for any help with this

I have installed an adaptec 39160 scsi adapter into my debian box. it has a 34GB disk attached to it. DMESG identifies the scsi controller as 'scsi5' I have tried to mount the disk using

mount /dev/sdc5 /mnt/scsi5

but i get this error:

'unknown filesystem type LVM2_Member'

I used the scsi utilities prior to boot to format the disk, but the utility didn't give me any options around what filesystem etc...

any help gratefully received

Paul

Is sdc5 the correct partition?

Has the disk been initialized with partitions and a filesystem?

Thanks - I just scanned through /dev using the ls command to see what was there.... I saw sdc1 and sdc5 amongst others and assumed this would be the scsi device.

(I hadn't mentioned sdc1 in my original post as I haven't got a drive attached to it, but it is a dual channel controller and dmesg recognised scsi1 as well)


I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff...

Paul

The disk has been formatted by using the adaptec scsi utilities which are available prior to GRUB loader and linux system boot.

I can't access it to find out what FS it has and was hoping to do that once I have access to it in the Debian os

hope I'm making some sense here

paul

In a nutshell sdc1 breaks down to sd i.e. SCSI disk but these days all drives no matter what bus i.e USB, SATA, IDE etc use the SCSI subsystem. The c is the physical drive letter and 1 the partition number. How many disks are installed in your computer.

Post the output of the command fdisk -l (that is a small L). Look at the output of the dmesg command. Did you or was the SCSI controller module automatically loaded? This controller uses the AIC7XXX module. You can look at the output of the lsmod command to verify.

That means there is no filesystem there. The disk should be blank. No partitions, no filesystems.

Thanks all for help. Here is the output from fdisk -l and at the very bottom a line from the lsmod command about the scsi controller module

the scsi drive is Disk /dev/sdd: 36.4 GB, near the bottom of the list.

Just as a matter of interest what is /dev/dm-1 which also doesn't contain a valid partition table?

My system is dual boot Debian and win XP and has the following physical drives which all work successfully:
Debian drive
Windows Drive
Data storage drive

and as mentioned , as of yesterday the PCI scsi adapter with a seagate 36GB drive which does not work as yet.

root@debian:/home/paul# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00046fe7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 32 248832 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 32 19930 159835137 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 32 19930 159835136 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 18.0 GB, 18042716160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2193 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x972768d7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 2192 17607208+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 82.0 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008e5e9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 9772 78493558+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 9773 9964 1542240 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 9773 9964 1542208+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/dm-0: 9999 MB, 9999220736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1215 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 1526 MB, 1526726656 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 185 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdd: 36.4 GB, 36420075008 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 34732 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdd doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-2: 152.1 GB, 152144183296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 18497 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-2 doesn't contain a valid partition table


output of last line from lsmod:

scsi_mod 126725 6 sg,sr_mod,sd_mod,libata,aic7xxx,scsi_transport_spi

Like I said - the disk is blank. You can't mount a blank disk. At a minimum you need to put a filesystem on it (mkfs /dev/sdd should do), or if you want to put multiple filesystems, partition the disk and then put filesystems on the partitions.

"The disk has been formatted by using the adaptec scsi utilities"

Then what format did you put on it? Normally one makes a partition and then formats the partition to some format. In reality one could use it as a raw device but that is beyond your issue right now.

I suspect jpollard is correct. You may have only initilized it as a member of the channel on the adapter.

It sounds like a misunderstanding of disk formatting... And this has happened ever since MS calls the action of putting a filesystem structure on the disk "formatting".

Low level formatting as done by the scsi utilities does not put a filesystem on the disk.

What it does do is rewrite all sector headers, and record any initially identified bad spots/remap errors. There is no data on the disk other than the sector headers. The utilities can usually perform a read check.. but for a full check it needs to do a write/read check - this records either random data (or writes various test patterns) and reads them back to test for errors. Any errors detected by this are added to the bad block list, and remapped. This is a destructive action that will destroy any data on the disk. You would normally do this AFTER reformatting the disk (the low level format operation). This is done because just rewriting the sector headers doesn't necessarily detect all errors - it only detects those errors that happen to the sector header itself.

The low level format is necessary, but usually done at the factory. With the current data densities it can take a long time to do, and then there is the bad block scan needed afterwards. For small disks (in the 3G size range) it used to take between 45 minutes and an hour and a half. Disks are faster now, but there is also a magnitude (or more) size difference, so doing this can take several hours. In some cases (where there has been no physical damage to the disk) this can recover a good disk and make it usable for quite a while. (The longest I've ever used a disk this way was for 10 years...)

Formatting errors are usually reported as read errors, read parity errors, and header checksum errors. The only way to correct the header checksum errors is through low level formatting. The sector header can be damaged by power failures - this doesn't happen as often now because disks usually have a sufficient capacitor charge to yank the read heads away from the disk (that action first disables the head so that it can't overwrite anything), and that protects the sector headers (and data) from damage. It CAN still happen, but is very infrequent.

Additional information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_formatting
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/l...ormatting.html

Once the low level formatting is complete the disk is ready to have other things done to it - setting partition tables (optional), creating filesystems (either to a partition, or to the entire disk).

Thanks to all for all this extensive info.

I put a filesystem on it using Gparted and it now works fine.

I also tried to run the scsi system on my windows 7 box, but an unpartitioned disk drive attached to the adaptec 39160 controller prevents windows from booting. As soon as I removed the drive, windows booted. So we have a solution in Linux, as Linux will boot with an unpartitoned drive attached to a scsi controller. I suspect there might be other advantages of Linux over win...

all the best
Paul

Thanks for the update.

I forget that scsi bios utilities provide a very good tool to do low level formats. It has keep many a scsi drive working at my site.