Hello. I have a server which is doing some archiving of files. What's kind of frustrating is that I inherited this server without any documentation.

Here's what I know about it:

1. There are two USB external hard drives drives connected to it.
2. It has six hard drives and a 3Ware 9550SX controller.
3. It MIGHT have 2 RAID 5 arrays of 3 drives a piece, but I can't pull the server down and look at the controller BIOS to find out. (I'm guessing judging from the information shown below)
4. It's running "Linux from Scratch"

Now, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but first of all, mdadm doesn't exist on this machine. Second of all, I can't seem to find the external USB Drives. Third, I'm seeing things that don't make sense.

What things do I need to do to find out the information I'm looking for?

I need to know:

1. What the device names of the USB drives are and how to get at the data that's sitting on them, if there's any data at all. (Taking them off the server and putting one of them on my PC isn't an option right now.)
2. How are the internal hard drives really set up?
3. How do I configure or examine md0 without mdadm?
4. How do I find out how the 3Ware 9550SX is configured without having to take down the machine?

So, here's some info:

root@xxx:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0 9.2G 2.9G 6.3G 32% /
/dev/sda2 1.1T 441G 646G 41% /srv/mysql
/dev/sdb2 1.1T 198G 890G 19% /filebackup
shm 1012M 0 1012M 0% /dev/shm

root@xxx:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1199.9 GB, 1199966257152 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 145887 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1217 9775521 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2 1218 145286 1157234242+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 145287 145887 4827532+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 1199.9 GB, 1199966257152 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 145887 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 1217 9775521 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb2 1218 145286 1157234242+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 145287 145887 4827532+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdc: 8 MB, 8388608 bytes
8 heads, 32 sectors/track, 64 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 256 * 512 = 131072 bytes

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

Disk /dev/md0: 10.0 GB, 10010034176 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 2443856 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

root@eb-xxx:~# mount
/dev/md0 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /srv/mysql type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sdb2 on /filebackup type ext3 (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=4,mode=620)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,devgid=14,devmode=0660)

root@xxx:~# cat /etc/fstab

# Begin /etc/fstab

# file system mount-point type options dump fsck
# order

#/dev/sdb1 /boot ext3 noauto 0 0
/dev/md0 / ext3 defaults 1 1
#/dev/sdb3 /srv ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/sda3 swap swap pri=1 0 0
/dev/sdb3 swap swap pri=1 0 0
/dev/sda2 /srv/mysql ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/sdb2 /filebackup ext3 defaults 1 1
#/dev/sdd1 /datausb ext3 defaults 1 1
#/dev/sde1 /fileusb ext3 defaults 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=4,mode=620 0 0
shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
# End /etc/fstab
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=14,devmode=0660 0 0

root@xxx:~# dmesg | grep raid
Adaptec aacraid driver (1.1-5[2409]-mh2)
megaraid cmm: 2.20.2.7 (Release Date: Sun Jul 16 00:01:03 EST 2006)
megaraid: 2.20.4.9 (Release Date: Sun Jul 16 12:27:22 EST 2006)
md: raid0 personality registered for level 0
md: raid1 personality registered for level 1
md: raid10 personality registered for level 10
raid1: raid set md0 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors

root@xxx:~# dmesg | grep 9550
Vendor: AMCC Model: 9550SX-8LP DISK Rev: 3.01
Vendor: AMCC Model: 9550SX-8LP DISK Rev: 3.01

root@xxx:~# dmesg | grep sdd
root@xxx:~# dmesg | grep sde


root@xxx:~# dmesg | grep md
Kernel command line: root=/dev/md0 vga=791 acpi=noirq
md: linear personality registered for level -1
md: raid0 personality registered for level 0
md: raid1 personality registered for level 1
md: raid10 personality registered for level 10
md: multipath personality registered for level -4
md: faulty personality registered for level -5
md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: bitmap version 4.39
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: considering sdb1 ...
md: adding sdb1 ...
md: adding sda1 ...
md: created md0
md: bind<sda1>
md: bind<sdb1>
md: running: <sdb1><sda1>
raid1: raid set md0 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors
md: ... autorun DONE.
EXT3 FS on md0, internal journal

root@xxx:~# uname -a
Linux xxx 2.6.18 #1 SMP Fri Nov 17 00:16:14 GMT 2006 i686 pentium4 i386 GNU/Linux

Any ideas? Need more information?

I found the vendor's web site and technical information about the card.
http://www.3ware.com/support/OS-Support.asp#lindis
The important thing here is that it says that a software driver is included for Linux and that Linux v2.6 kernel has a driver built into it. That means that the card is not fully independent of the operating system. Therefore it requires a Linux device driver to create the RAID configuration, hence the md0 device.

I haven't used RAID under Linux. I do, however, see boot messages on my own Linux machines that indicate that a startup script is trying to autodetect RAID devices. This may relate to the partition on each of your disks that are described as being Linux RAID autodetect partitions.

Look in your machine's startup scripts for the messages that you see in dmesg relating to md0 and RAID. You can use grep for this.
My PCLOS system shows only /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit using this search. That's where I would start looking for information about RAID on my system.

There should be some kind of software utility to create and manage the RAID configuration for this card. I'd look in /sbin and /usr/sbin for anything that seems like some kind of RAID setup software.

bbennett,

Please put CLI output in "Code:" blocks to preserve the monospace font alignment. I can't easily, & therefore won't bother to, read those parts of your posts. I don't want to be rude, but frankly if you expect volunteer help, you ought to make it as easy for us as you can. If this is a case of being so new to LQ & the vBulletin forum s/w, I apologize for the harshness of my comments. Unfortunately I have lost patience w/ posts I can't read.

We will be glad to explain "Code:" blocks, if you ask.

Here you go...