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corefreak
2006-10-28, 08:39 AM CDT
Hi,

I have a problem, setting up a small file server with a raid 5 array:

my configuration:

epia v mainboard
256 mb sdram
promise sata300 tx2plus

40gb maxtor hdd on ide1 of the epia mainboards

200 gb hitachi sata on promise controller
200 gb maxtor sata on promise controller
160 gb samsung pata on ide (!) port of the promise controller

os: fc6 minimal installation, up-to-date

intention: setting up an encrypted raid 5 array with 40 gb usable space (40gb just für testing, later 400 gb usable space with 3x 200gb (in raid5) = 400 gb)

approach / problem:

- setting up partitions with fdisk (only 20gb per hdd for testing purpose), partitiontyp "Linux raid autodetect"
- making raid5 : "mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1"
- waiting for the recovery of the raid array (needs about 15 min), after this, /proc/mdstat says: everything ok

now I would like to fill up the complete array with zeros for a secure encryption with dm-crypt:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/md0

Filling runs for about 5 seconds, then the system boots (without shutdown). I found no interesting entries in the usual log files.

Sometimes the box crashed during the recovery process, but the process contiuous after booting.


I tried the following things without sucess:

- another pata hdd on the ide port of the promise controller
- another ide cabel from pata hdd to promise controller
- compiling the original promise driver (even with the correct kernel sources the compiling process fails...)

before I am going to set up the box with a pentium 3 mainboard (instead of the epia), maybe someone does have some ideas:

- could the controller be buggy?
- are the modules of linux (promise and sata) sometimes "difficult" ?
- is it okay, to fill up the array device /dev/md0 with zeros ??

Thanks in advance for every idea!

greetings

Johannes

White_FrosT
2006-11-10, 07:07 AM CST
Could this be related to this problem?
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=673999