Hello I'm a Linux Newbie,

I have a Check Point Mgmt server running on Linux see below version

Linux 2.6.18-92cp #1 SMP Sun Jan 30 14:41:37 IST 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

I'm looking to come up with a Disaster Recovery plan if/when a hard drive crashes. There are two hard drives installed, I ran and fdisk -l but have no idea how to read...

How do you know how many hard drives are installed from CLI???

How would I go about installing a new one and know that it is configured properly??

I guess I'm looking for some type of step by step if a hard drive crashes... Not sure if this is the place to request.. any help would be appreciated.

fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 146.7 GB, 146778685440 bytes
255 heads, 32 sectors/track, 35132 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8160 * 512 = 4177920 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 * 1 38 155024 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 39 423 1570800 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3 424 2736 9437040 82 Linux swap
/dev/cciss/c0d0p4 2737 35132 132175680 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 2737 3623 3618944 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 3624 3880 1048544 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 3881 35132 127508144 83 Linux

Mount command output:
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 on /opt type ext3 (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 on /sysimg type ext3 (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 on /var type ext3 (rw)

The best thing to do is regular backups. I would also run regular SMART long tests, which can alert you to an imminent failure.

Many servers also use RAID arrays so they can keep data online all the time. Not sure if you need this for your server. It's not really a backup method, just increased redundancy.

If the HDD fails, you'll probably want to either get your data off right away if you have a small amount of data, or image the drive to an equal or larger drive and then recover the data from the new drive using testdisk or foremost.

The cciss driver handles HP SMART RAID controllers. The /dev/cciss/c0d0 device node points to the first array of the first (and probably only) RAID controller.

In other words, your system is equipped with a hardware RAID controller, and the single, logical disk appearing as /dev/cciss/c0d0 is in fact a RAID array.

The questions you will need to find the answers to, are:

• How is this array configured (RAID 0 or RAID 1)?
• If this is a redundant array, will the management software alert you when a drive fails?

Thanks for replying.. Ser Olmy I think the below output tells me I don't have an array... I could be wrong.. and I verify with Check Point to see if alerts of drive failure.

[Expert@xrivpn]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities :
unused devices: <none>
[Expert@xrivpn]#

metaschima... That's my plan to backup regularly I have instructions from Check Pointe how to do.. and I will look into the SMART long tests..

So if either of you could answer this then.. I have a spare hard drive for the server if one fails what would be my steps to getting the replacement hard installed and the server/Linux to recognize it... not worrying about the data just yet..

Thanks for help...

You're looking in the wrong place. The md driver is for software RAID, while your server has hardware RAID.

There's a good chance your server has the HP Array Configuration Utility installed. Try this command:It should show the slot number of your RAID controller. Then try this:Replace <slot_number> with the number reported by the first command, and you should see the status of your RAID array.

Hardware arrays are driven by a CPU on the RAID controller, and presented to the OS through a driver as a single hard drive.

For a server, I would say the best method of accomplishing this is to use RAID1. This mirrors the two HDDs and keeps them mirrored. You could also mirror them without RAID and keep one offline if you don't need to keep the server online all the time.

I agree, and I'm quite certain that's exactly what he has.

Hi Ser,

It doesn't appear to have it installed

[Expert@xrivpn]# hpacucli controller all show
-bash: hpacucli: command not found
[Expert@xrivpn]# hpacucli
-bash: hpacucli: command not found
[Expert@xrivpn]#

Thanks for you help.. I'll see if I can download off HP website..