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Topic: Areca Raid Card Partitions

Hi,

I've got an areca raid 1260 card. Noone on the net has yet to be able to tell me howto grow my raid partitions without re partitioning and remaking a FS. GParted looks VERY promising for me on every front.

My issue is though that when I use the LiveCD my /dev/sda device does not show in Gparted. THere is a kernel module called arcmsr.ko that is the controlling module for the card. But I don't have clear direction on what to do with it. I don't see a familiar module on the blue screen list when I first enter into GParted. I seem to see something for 3ware etc but not Areca.

First should I do that load module manually thing and type something at the command prompt?
Second what should I be typing?
Third am I giving you enough of a description for you to know what I'm talking about?
Maybe there's something else wrong???


I hope that GParted can finally enable me to add a disk at a time to my raid/volume set and continue to add space to my system.

Let me know what I should do?

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

hi frenchimack smile
thx for trying GParted official livecd smile
You cant load modules, since this module is not set in the kernel. I will try to see how to add it asap.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

thx much. Let me know if I can give you any more info or possibly even send you the module if you need it. The areca card is gaining a lot of popularity because of reliability and RAID 6. But the whole OCE (Online Capacity Expansion) thing in cards at this level is a joke. Expanding in Arecas' mind is being able to expand the raid and volume sets while the server is still running. They have no clue as to hot to make that new space useable to the OS after you've added a disk. Especially for the unix/linux world.

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

Well, i tried to config kernel enabling areca, but here it failed when booting it sad
But could you please give it a try, and tell me if it works with you ?
BTW, kernel 2.6.19 is on the last livecd, so maybe it will be enough...
All can be found here, until we realese a new version :
http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=313

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

Larry unfortunately this particular LiveCD version doesn't boot at all on my system. I get a kernel panic error (will supply the exact error when I get back home). I've also discovered that I need kernel 2.6.19.2.

But I have gotten gParted loaded on my system and seeing my sda device,
My sda device shows my 1 partition of about 932 gigs (3 500 gig disks running in raid 5), and the new drive that I just added and want to expand my partition over into which is about 462 gigs (gparted shows this as unallocated space and gives me the option only to add a new partition on it).
When I try to resize my partition to the total unallocated space (up to 1.5tb aprox) I get a message saying that "a partition cannot have a length of sector -1". I was able to resize my partition to about 972 gigs after playing with the adjustment arrow, then I did successfully apply the changes. But I cannot resize the partition to any size larger than this without getting the above mentioned error message. Could it be a program problem in possibly a variable not being declared large enough to handle more than a terabyte worth of sectors? This "-1" error message seems strange to me? I will eventually be sizing this partition to about 7-8 terabytes once I've added all the disks.

What would occur if I created a new partition in the unallocated space, shrank it down then resized the initial partition. I'm afraid to because I believe that I'd only be able to shrink this new partition from the end, not from the beginning (ie make partition from sector 1000 to 1200, I could only shrink the partition from 1000 down to 1100 instead of shrinking 1100-=1200). Besides would even trying this fix my issue?

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

I am interested in the answer to frenchimack's questions as well....

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

I have three questions:

1- What is the maximum allowable size of an ext3 partition?
2- Is it possible to expand an ext3 partition from size n to size n + (any given size)
3- What are the strengths and weaknesses of using lvm as an abstraction layer (so that I don't have to resize the base ext3 partition?)

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

Well, the next official release is cooking atm smile
I will add too the last red hat raidtools, and kernel 2.6.20. So i hope this will solve your problem.
It should be available tomorrow ...

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

Been waiting for a while for some new news on this. In the mean time I have a question. If you are going to base the fix for this issue on kernel 2.6.20, should I upgrade and patch my main os to version 2.6.20?
I actually tried a new version of the Livecd, It seemed to be able to see and size my drive, but I cannot see the volume at all now when I boot my server regularly. Will patching help? Also if I patch my OS will the Areca drivers then be in the patches?

Last and most important, what should my fstab file look like if I create a gpt partition? Can you list the values for my /dev/sda1 device? I'm using an ext3 file system. What are the other values that I should use?

thx and really apreciate the help!!!

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Re: Areca Raid Card Partitions

frenchimack,
I am sorry , but I am not able to give you an answer : I don't know your OS, and have really no time...
Can't you contact support for your OS ?

Sorry ofr this, but neither time nor clue sad

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)