[ale] Just an FYI share

Lightner, Jeff JLightner at water.com
Wed Jul 3 09:03:48 EDT 2013


What the fsck?!

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Wolf Halton
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2013 9:18 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Just an FYI share


disks that mate for life?

Wolf Halton
--
http://wolfhalton.info
Apache developer:
wolfhalton at apache.org<mailto:wolfhalton at apache.org>
On Jun 30, 2013 9:45 PM, "JD" <jdp at algoloma.com<mailto:jdp at algoloma.com>> wrote:
Your experience is seen a few times every month on the Ubuntu Forums.

RAID tools, definitely mdadm, leave RAID information on the drive in the form of
a superblock, so to reuse a drive, we need to remove that "RAID" tag from the
physical disk.  I think mdadm has an option to do it, though I've never had an
issue reusing former mdadm RAID HDDs in other systems.  --zero-superblock seems
to ring a bell for me.  As usual, check the man page for your specific installed
tools.

OTOH, some disks like each other and really, REALLY want to stay together. Seems
sorta cool that they try so very hard. Huh?


On 06/30/2013 09:31 PM, Chuck Payne wrote:
> If you are like me and recycle things when you can. One thing to watch
> out for, that I never thought to check on. What is really written to a
> hard drive.
>
> I had a NAS die a while back, that left me 5 health drives. While
> upgrading my server, I used one of the drives to replace a failed
> drive in my server.
>
> Well when I went to write the file system for the drive, I kept
> getting a very strange error, that the new drive was in use by the
> system.  "WTF!", how can this be? I ran fdisk and gparted. Both
> partition the drive correct but when I when to write the file system.
> Again, I got the error that the drive was in use.
>
> I reboot changed how my SATA drive acted from IDE to ACHI, since I
> don't have any more IDE in the server.  I tried again. Same error.
> Well I looked in dmesg saw the drive, but I saw that the first slice
> was in use by soft raid  (md).  Say what? Sure enough I cat /proc/md
> and there it was. Again, excuse the use, but "WTF!".
>
> When the distro I use, did a scan for existing partitions. I thought I
> had blasted all the partition, the showed was using XFS /dev/sdx1, but
> there was a hidden partition. One the OS picked up on, but fdisk and
> gpart did not. The partition, I found out was where the raid wrote the
> it information, it showed up as MD-512 on my partition tool.
>
> I used the partition tool that comes with my distro to remove the
> hidden partition and I am able to use the drive.
>
> I wanted to share this because, to this day I haven't seen this. My
> distro saw that hidden partition and thought, ok there is a soft raid,
> lets set it up, even though there the other four drives were missing.
>
> So I guess next time I recycle a drive, I will use a nuke program and
> not hope that fdisk or gparted will get the drive done because it
> didn't this time.
>
> I wanted to share this just in cause anyone else hits a drive that you
> can't write too, that you just add to a system.
>
> I am not sure if this part 3.x kernel.
>
> Any thoughts? Feed back is welcome.
>
> --
> Terror PUP a.k.a
> Chuck "PUP" Payne
>
> (678) 636-9678<tel:%28678%29%20636-9678>




_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org<mailto:Ale at ale.org>
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo





Athena®, Created for the Cause™

Making a Difference in the Fight Against Breast Cancer





How and Why I Should Support Bottled Water!
Do not relinquish your right to choose bottled water as a healthy alternative to beverages that contain sugar, calories, etc. Your support of bottled water will make a difference! Your signatures count! Go to http://www.bottledwatermatters.org/luv-bottledwater-iframe/dswaters and sign a petition to support your right to always choose bottled water. Help fight federal and state issues, such as bottle deposits (or taxes) and organizations that want to ban the sale of bottled water. Support community curbside recycling programs. Support bottled water as a healthy way to maintain proper hydration. Our goal is 50,000 signatures. Share this petition with your friends and family today!



---------------------------------
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
----------------------------------


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20130703/99592c48/attachment.html>


More information about the Ale mailing list