Adding a drive to a RAID 5 array on SuSE with Webmin package
 

Hi all

I use Webmin to remotely admin my SuSE box. I use it as a shared fileserver for my home network, with the shared files being held on a RAID5 array consisting of 3 hard drives. The configuration is currently setup like this:

1x hard disc (/, /boot, swap)
3x hard disc software RAID5 (/home, used as shared space)

I'm almost out of space on the RAID5 partition, and would like to increase it with a spare hard drive that I have.
Is it possible to simply add the hard drive to the array, and activate it via Webmin without needing to re-create the array (and losing all the data which I don't really have the means to backup)?

Many thanks for any help or advice :)

No, that's not possible. The code to be able to expand a raid5 has been finalized March 17th, 2006 and will be included in the upcoming 2.6.17 release of the linux kernel. (2.6.17rc3-mm1 is already available and contains the code.)

I doubt webmin will include this functionality any time soon (if ever). So you would need to update your kernel (and possibly mdadm), then expand the raid and after that expand the filesystem. Both the last steps are highly critical and I wouldn't go anywhere near this unless you have a full backup of the data.