1 Topic by gedakc (edited by gedakc 2009-04-04 21:48:51)

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Topic: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Anyone with an ATA-RAID (motherboard based raid) interested in helping out with GParted testing?

Testing is only advised on a non-production system when you have a backup of your data.  :-)

Initial support for /dev/mapper dmraid devices has been added to GParted and committed to the gnome SVN repository.

A tarball is available at:
gparted-0.4.4.tar.bz2

Testing to date has been on an Intel software RAID.

REQUIRED DEPENDENCIES:

  • kpartx

  • dmraid

  • dmsetup

KNOWN PROBLEM:

  • FAT16 and FAT32 file systems show an exclamation mark in the display.
        This is because GParted uses dosfsck to determine the number of used
        sectors.  Unfortunately, dosfsck does not appear to work with
        /dev/mapper devices.  :-(

*** EDIT:  - The above problem with FAT16/32 appears to be fixed with dosfstools v3.0+ ***

TESTS:
It would be great if you could test and report back on the following:

1)  Does gparted recognize your /dev/mapper/... RAID drive?
    NOTE: That individual /dev/sd[a|b|c|d] will still be shown as well.

2)  Can you create, resize, and delete a partition?

3)  Can you move, and copy a partition?
    You might want to try a small partition so it doesn't take too long.

4)  Does gparted properly recognize mounted partitions?

5)  If you have a dmraid device that you can afford to wipe clean,
     can you create a new partition table?

2 Reply by Patrick Verner

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

The Parted Magic project is helping out the GParted team by offering iso test releases with new dmraid features. This will be updated as new changes are discovered in GParted SVN.

The iso images are located in this directory on the Parted Magic server:

http://beefdrapes.partedmagic.com/

Patrick Verner's Website

3 Reply by gedakc

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Beta3 of the dmraid support for gparted has been committed to the repository on March 16, 2009.

Changes include:

  • Improved swap and dmraid mount point detection

  • Enhanced dmraid partition deletion including partition names with or without a 'p' between the device name and the partition number.

The first post has been updated accordingly with this new link.

4 Reply by Patrick Verner

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Parted Magic LiveCD test version updated to GParted SVN - March 16, 2009

http://beefdrapes.partedmagic.com/

Patrick Verner's Website

5 Reply by gedakc

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Beta4 of the dmraid support for gparted has been committed to the repository on March 23, 2009.

Changes include:

  • both the left (start) and right (end) sides of an extended partition can now be resized

If no new problems are discovered, this will likely be the last change made to dmraid support prior to the next GParted release.

The first post has been updated accordingly with this new link.

6 Reply by Patrick Verner

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Parted Magic LiveCD test version updated to gparted-0.4.3-dmraid-beta4

http://beefdrapes.partedmagic.com/

Patrick Verner's Website

7 Reply by danwood76 (edited by danwood76 2009-03-24 09:15:21)

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

gparted-0.4.3-dmraid-beta4 doesnt search the /dev/mapper by default.
Is this the desired behaviour?
Everything works when supplying the block device (/dev/mapper/XXXX) in the command line though, move, resize, copy, delete, and create.

This is on Ubuntu 9.04 with dmraid rc15.
Libparted 1.8.8

8 Reply by gedakc (edited by gedakc 2009-03-24 20:01:13)

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Thank you for your testing and reporting back danwood76.

Since the /dev/mapper directory contains not only devices but also partitions, the devices are discovered with the command:
     dmraid -sa -c

The above command should list all active dmraid devices.

What does this command return on your system?

Do you have the kpartx command in additition to dmraid and dmsetup on your system?

Would you please also provide a "ls -l" listing of your /dev/mapper directory?

9 Reply by gedakc

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

GParted 0.4.4 is planned for release on April 2nd, 2009.

The top post in this thread has been updated with the location of the 0.4.4-beta1 tarball.

10 Reply by danwood76 (edited by danwood76 2009-03-27 13:30:17)

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

Hi the above command displays just the block devices:

sudo dmraid -sa -c
isw_cjfgejeghi_HD3
jmicron_HD2

I have two different types of dmraid volume, jmicron and intel sw raid but I assume this shouldnt affect gparted.

ls -l /dev/mapper
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root root  10, 61 2009-03-27 11:18 control
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  1 2009-03-27 11:22 isw_cjfgejeghi_HD3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  2 2009-03-27 11:22 isw_cjfgejeghi_HD31
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  0 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  3 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD21
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252, 10 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD210
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  9 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD211
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252, 11 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD212
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  5 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD25
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  6 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD26
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  7 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD27
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  4 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD28
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 252,  8 2009-03-27 11:22 jmicron_HD29

I dont have kpartx as default on this system although it is available in the repos.
I havent tested the 0.4.4-beta1 yet, will do that once I've completed what Im doing at the moment.

-- edit --

I just had a thought, all my RAID drives have numbers on the end, is gparted somehow confusing these for partitions and just ignoring them?

11 Reply by gedakc

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Re: [SOLVED] Need Help Testing /dev/mapper dmraid Support

danwood76 wrote:

I just had a thought, all my RAID drives have numbers on the end, is gparted somehow confusing these for partitions and just ignoring them?

When there is a number at the end of the device name, libparted expects the partition to be named as the device name plus the letter 'p' plus the partition number.  This is why kpartx is required.  :-)

GParted will use the command kpartx to create these missing device entries.