Fedora 17 does not recognize additional drives

[erwtas]

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

After some web searching, i found a post (from the days of Fedora Core 8) that said the Linux kernel needs to be configured with CONFIG_LDM_PARTITION=y in order for Dynamic disks to be a recognizable type of partition. in my /boot/config.... files (FC 16-64) the kernels don't have this configuration variable turned on.

I added the sentence to the "/boot/config...", but nothing happened.

[greno]

No, no.

You have to add the option to the kernel config and build a new kernel.

Google how to build a Linux kernel and you'll see what needs to be done.

.

[glennzo]

Originally Posted by greno

SFS does not mean squashfs.

It is SFS (Dynamic Disk).

I think the kernel option is probably the right direction here.

You'll need to build a kernel with CONFIG_LDM_PARTITION=y option.

.

Ahhh. My bad then.

[RHamel]

This is a quote from my windows 7 resource kit book concerning these type of disks.

Dynamic disks, first introduced in Microsoft Windows 2000, provide all of the functionality
of the basic disk, plus the ability to span a volume across multiple dynamic disks or stripe
multiple dynamic disks to create a larger (and faster) volume. Dynamic disks present difficulties,
however, because they are not accessible from operating systems other than the operating
system instance that converted the disk to dynamic. This makes dynamic disks inaccessible in
multiboot environments and makes recovering data more difficult in the event of partial hard
disk failure. You should always use basic disks unless you have a specific requirement that can
be met only by dynamic disks.

[greno]

Originally Posted by RHamel

This is a quote from my windows 7 resource kit book concerning these type of disks.

Yes, that's propaganda.

With the right kernel module, ldm.ko, you can access these disks.

.

[tashirosgt]

Originally Posted by erwtas

I added the sentence to the "/boot/config...", but nothing happened.

The config file doesn't do anything to the kernel. It merely informs you of the options that were used when the kernel was compiled. You need to find a kernel that was compiled with the option enabled or compile a kernel yourself.

[erwtas]

Thanks, I've downloaded the latest patch to the kernel (i hope that fixes it), but since I'm a complete noob when it comes to linux, can someone guide me through the update process?

Sorry about the hassle, but I'm really new at this

[greno]

What patch do you mean?

For generating ldm.ko?

.

[erwtas]

I mean for Upgrading kernel 3.4.0 to 3.4.2, which contains the CONFIG_LDM_PARTITION=y option, so I don't have to build an entire kernel by myself.

[greno]

Where did you find this kernel?

I see no 3.4.2 in yum listing

yum list 'kernel*'

.

[erwtas]

http://www.kernel.org/

[greno]

Ok, you cannot use straight vanilla kernels from kernel.org without knowing exactly what you're doing.

Keep checking yum for kernels.

I thought the 3.4.0 might be a good candidate until I see a report of it causing NFS corruption.

Once a kernel past 3.4.0 appears in yum list then install it plus the *matching* kernel-modules-extra package.

So you would check like this:

su
yum list 'kernel*'

And when ready to install:

su
yum install kernel  kernel-modules-extra

You need to check, but I think LDM might be in the kernel-modules-extra package.

UPDATE: ok, bad news. I checked the kernel-modules-extra package contents and did not find LDM module.

So you need to get the kernel source for your running fedora kernel (get this from fedora) and enable the LDM option in the config as suggested previously and then build your kernel.

.

[erwtas]

Thank you for the info, I've downloaded the kernel-modules-extra, but how do I check it to see if it contains LDM?

[greno]

Originally Posted by erwtas

Thank you for the info, I've downloaded the kernel-modules-extra, but how do I check it to see if it contains LDM?

It doesn't. I checked.

What is your running kernel version?

[DBelton]

SFS are Windows dynamic disks and can span multiple drives. They can be supported in Fedora if you manually configure them as a linear RAID, then mount the filesystem.

It's a pain in the butt, though. I believe the last time I looked at doing it, I had to manually configure the size, etc... and use dm-raid to mount the linear raid with. I do remember that after I got mine set up, I vowed to never use SFS drives again, and it was only about a month until I reformatted all of my drives and got rid of them, using only basic disks in Windows.

I'll look around in my notes here and see if I wrote down the steps I took.