December 2008

More MD weirdness

December 29, 2008December 29, 2008 Christian Leave a comment

Well, at last I’m getting somewhere with my troubles. This only seems to be happening when creating an RAID5 multiple device with four disks, this doesn’t happen with three.

Now, the next thing I tried was to create a three disk array, and then adding the fourth disk as spare and then extending the array with that fourth disk. After that, all these errors seem to appear again *yuck* So I either possess rather faulty disks, or something else is fishy, since I’m having another four disk RAID5 array with the old disks …

MD (Multiple Devices) weirdness

December 29, 2008August 8, 2014 Christian Leave a comment

Well, I don’t think my problem has anything to do with the DawiControl card anymore. I did a little experiment today. I created a 1TiB EXT3 file system on a single drive (one of the new 1TiB drives obviously) and started syncing data over to it (roughly 800MiB).

Now, then I unmounted the drive(s), ran fsck -C -f /dev/sd${deviceletter}1 and it went through without any trouble. Then I removed the partition and created a 1GiB partition on each drive, which I then used to build a new device mapper RAID5 array (with EXT3 on top …).

And guess what happened after I copied the data over, unmounted the file system and ran fsck ? Sure, same thing as yesterday. Now, this means either it’s a mdadm bug, while creating the array or really MD’s fault (which I can rule out, since the same happens on 2.6.25 as well as on 2.6.28) … *shrug*

SIL 3114 barfing

December 28, 2008August 8, 2014 Christian 2 Comments

Well, after I had so much trouble with the USB converter (which isn’t really suited for Linux), I went ahead and bought a DawiControl DC-154 (which is using a SIL3114) controller to migrate my stuff.

After fucking up the new RAID array with the 1TB disks on the old controller (luckily I had the old hard disks still lying around, which still contained the RAID array), I plugged the 1TB disks onto the new controller and started building the array. So after 760 minutes (that’s nearly 13 hours) of synchronizing the newly created array, I was finally able to create the file system — that should be without trouble, right ?

Well, yeah … it was … So I started putting the data on the newly created array (using rsync). Only problem: something seems to be corrupting data (as in EXT3 is barfing up a lot of file system errors).

Dec 28 08:47:21 epimetheus [67092.652866] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Dec 28 09:53:20 epimetheus [71058.253027] EXT3-fs error (device md2): ext3_add_entry: bad entry
 in directory #23371810: directory entry across blocks - offset=260, inode=18964552,
 rec_len=26988, name_len=115
Dec 28 09:53:20 epimetheus [71058.305558] EXT3-fs error (device md2): ext3_add_entry: bad entry
 in directory #23371810: directory entry across blocks - offset=260, inode=18964552,
 rec_len=26988, name_len=115

Dec 28 08:47:21 epimetheus [67092.652866] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

Dec 28 09:53:20 epimetheus [71058.253027] EXT3-fs error (device md2): ext3_add_entry: bad entry

in directory #23371810: directory entry across blocks - offset=260, inode=18964552,

rec_len=26988, name_len=115

Dec 28 09:53:20 epimetheus [71058.305558] EXT3-fs error (device md2): ext3_add_entry: bad entry

in directory #23371810: directory entry across blocks - offset=260, inode=18964552,

rec_len=26988, name_len=115

(fsck.ext3 is returning much, much more ..)

After putting the blame on EXT3, I tried out reiserfs (yeah, yeah I know .. baaaad idea). Well, at first it didn’t put out any errors, but running fsck.reiserfs turned up errors that looked a lot like the ones fsck.ext3 returned.

Then, I started looking at the array size (since I was curious), and it said the new array on four 1TB disks is ~760GB. Now according to my improper math, using 4* 1000GB drives the total usable amount of disk space should be something like 2793.96GB, and not ~760GB. *shrug*

I’m out of idea’s right now, and I’m gonna wait till January till I do anything else.

USB weirdness

December 23, 2008December 23, 2008 Christian 1 Comment

Well, I was at work for a brief moment, where I grabbed me one of our SATA->USB bridges, since I need to migrate some (~750GB) data of the old raid-array and onto a new one. The troublesome about that is simply, that the current RAID controller only supports four attached devices, that’s why I do have to use something like this … Sure I could have bought a new RAID controller, but why spend 45+ EUR on something, that you can solve differently ?

Well, after figuring that I need to change my kernel config yet again (didn’t have USB support till Tue Dec 23 ~16:45:00 CET 2008) I attached the adapter to two adjacent USB ports. And shortly after copying 4-10MB, the transfer would result in a read-only EXT3 file system with something like this in the syslog:

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: Product: OHCI Host Controller
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.25-hardened-r11 ohci_hcd
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:02.1
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb 1-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: device not accepting address 2, error -71
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus usb 1-2: device not accepting address 2, error -71
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 2
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus sd 4:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 1229380295
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 1229380535
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus Aborting journal on device sde1.
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus ext3_abort called.
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus EXT3-fs error (device sde1): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus Remounting filesystem read-only
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus EXT3-fs error (device sde1) in ext3_ordered_writepage: IO failure
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_frozen_data
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_frozen_data
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_frozen_data
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_frozen_data
Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_committed_data

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: Product: OHCI Host Controller

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.25-hardened-r11 ohci_hcd

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:02.1

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2

Dec 23 17:23:57 epimetheus usb 1-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71

Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2

Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71

Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2

Dec 23 17:23:58 epimetheus usb 1-2: device not accepting address 2, error -71

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus usb 1-2: device not accepting address 2, error -71

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 2

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus sd 4:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 1229380295

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 1229380535

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus Aborting journal on device sde1.

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus ext3_abort called.

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus EXT3-fs error (device sde1): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus Remounting filesystem read-only

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus EXT3-fs error (device sde1) in ext3_ordered_writepage: IO failure

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_frozen_data

Dec 23 17:23:59 epimetheus __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_committed_data

Well, now what ? I googled a for a bit, apparently this happens when EHCI tries to write to the device and gets a timeout, cause the device is rather slow — or whatever (or the device drops down to USB 1.1). So, after disabling EHCI, the transfer has been running for about three hours now, and roughly only 1/12 of the data transferred to the external disk. Only trouble with that is, that even USB 1.1 is kinda slow to transfer 750GiB ❗

Followup: Well, due to USB 1.1 being slow as a snail, I went surfing for alternatives using Windows (since I know that the bridge does full USB 2.0 with Windows without any troubles). And guess what I found ?
There’s an EXT2/3 device driver for Windows XP, yay! So I’m copying with full 100Mbit speed right now *shrug*

Short vacation

December 3, 2008December 3, 2008 Christian 1 Comment

Well, Arne recently (not really recently though .. 😛 ) complained about my blog being waaay to technical, so I ended up writing this lil’ anecdote.

I’m finally on my long awaited, the remaining year lasting vacation. Last week was interrupted by a short job interview in Nuremberg, and also by the flu (not “again“, I still got it in me, haven’t been able to shake it now for about three months).

Today I’m spending the night on Spiekeroog, which is a smallish island in the middle of the North Sea. It’s a real neat island, and if I would have the choice of deciding whether or not to move here for the same salary, I’d probably do it. Spiekeroog certainly does have a certain amount of flair, which I ain’t gonna deny. But it also does have it’s drawbacks.

One thing “neat” about Spiekeroog is, that it’s completely isolated from the CO² pollution. There is not a single car on the island (well, besides emergency services like police and fire/rescue) – only electric cars.

It’s located in the North Sea, so it’s exposed to the raw Atlantic weather of which I got a good taste today. When I was planning the trip a few weeks back, I allotted about 8 hours for the 400km’ish trip to Neuharlingersiel. Due to my driving “skills” ( 😀 others would say I do have a rather heavy foot – 170km/h or 105.6331 mph for those not able to deal with the metric system ❗ ), I was there about two hours early. So I went eating some crab soup (which was really delicious) and then went down to the harbour, where the hotel boat was gonna pick me up. And then it started raining (as in pouring), with only about 2°C air temperature. So basically I was freezing my bollocks off.

Anyway, after eating dinner worth fifty bucks in the restaurant (well, don’t forget the expensive rose wine – which was a bit sour actually, as well as the three bucks of delicious tea) I’m now all cosy within my bed and all tucked in.

Cheerio for now!