Hey all, I just booted a Debian 6 Live CD on a ProLiant DL360 G5 and Debian can't see the hard drives. I booted to the Live CD, opened a terminal and nothing:


The drives were running in an array but I deleted the array before I booted the server. If I recreate the array the array shows up. Any ideas? Suggestions? Recommendations?

Thanks,

Joe B

If there's no array, there'll be no visible drives for fdisk to access.

If an array is defined and you still can't see any drives (ls /dev/sd* returns nothing), kernel support for the Smart Array controller is missing.

Well, Ser Olmy, that's not really the answer I was looking for but it is the answer I was expecting.

Thanks,

Joe B

I hope I didn't misunderstand your question?

(Smart Array controllers generally work very well with Linux, and have done for many years.)

I just know few Live CD distribution and I now trying Debian Live CD. It can be download from this link: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/...86/iso-hybrid/

As I comparing different Live CD/recovery disc, so far I satisfy with this one:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sys...ccd-x86/2.4.0/
especially version 2.4.0 due to following:

1 multi language support as well as built in module mozilla firefox
2 support so so many hardware like networking device, from 56k modem, adsl modem, wire LAN to wireless PCI card.
3 graphical interface with essential disk recovery tools like GPart etc

I now trying latest Debian Live CD version 6, I guess it has NO graphical interface (may be I not know well X command). For your case Debian Live unable to find your disk, I would also check the /dev/sd? see if there any device first, then please try to do mount

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_live_CDs

I am confused. If this is a hardware array and you delete it of course it will not show up anymore. I assume you mean that you then reboot and access the raid configuration so that on next boot it shows up.

Allow me to clarify -- I'm not trying to recover the array and I'm not trying to recover data. This is a spare server and I'm now playing with a live CD on it. I was going to create an MDADM array on it but there were no hard drives to be seen. I've been able to see unmounted drives in the past (haven't I?) so I "assumed" I'd be able to see the server's unmounted drives. I'll do a little more experimentation and get a little more data.

Thanks,

Joe B

I see what you mean, but that's not how hardware RAID controllers work.

Unlike software RAID and "fakeRAID" (software RAID with BIOS boot support), the controller does not expose controller channels or individual drives to the operating system at all. The driver talks to the controller chip, which in turn decides what the OS "sees", based on the RAID configuration stored either in NVRAM or as metadata on the drives themselves.

In a fakeRAID/software RAID scenario, the OS has drivers for the actual SATA/SAS/IDE/whatever controller and can see the individual drives, and a second RAID driver uses those drivers/partitions to create a virtual RAID device and present that device to the operating system. If no RAID device is defined, you'll just see the physical drives.

In contrast, a hardware RAID controller only presents the virtual RAID device(s). Neither the individual drives nor the controller channel(s) are directly accessible. That's why software like smartctl needs to support a hardware RAID controller specifically in order to retrieve SMART information from individual drives connected to such a controller.

To access the drives, you will need to either define a RAID set or use the Array Configuration Utility on the HP SmartStart CD/DVD (except for the latest G8 Servers, which have built-in SmartStart software).

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summary: following 2 links are good live OS

https://sourceforge.net/projects/sys...ccd-x86/2.4.0/
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/re....04.1/release/