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RAID 5 "OFFLINE" - please help
Hi!
My PE 2900 server somehow lost power when I was at work a few days ago.
And I have not been able to boot into the OS (Debian 11) since.
I have understood that I can not boot due to that something has happened to the RAID configuration in some way. (Not sure what though.)
But from what I can see, there are three disks that are "missing" and one disk is "ready".
Unfortunately I do not know much about RAID / PERC and I really need your support.
Tried to run DSET (following an online advice) from a Debian Live CD, but I did not succeed.
Also tried booting with "Dell OMSA Live CD" but there were not many options for me to do there, (which I was comfortable with). I have no backup of the disks, so I MUST get this fixed somehow.
I am on sick leave after a stroke and can not afford to leave the disks to a company for help with backups etc.
I really need all the help I can get and even though I have a bad finances, I can pay around $ 50 to the person who helps me get the server back up, or so that I can take a full backup of everything.
DELL-Chris H
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May 24th, 2022 07:00
Guldstrand,
Sorry it appears there was a short outage with the page. If you are fairly confident on the drives slots location, and it doesn't stand out that it looks like a drive was removed after the failure, then I would go ahead and delete the VD and try the retag. You have to remember when doing so that you DO NOT INITIALIZE THE DISK, or it will format the drives and overwrite the data.
Let us know how it goes.
Guldstrand
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
Now I got this, after creating a new RAID and restarting the server.
I hope it's a reasonably good sign?
DELL-Chris H
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
Are you able to access the data, any other errors being displayed?
DELL-Chris H
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
From the log it appears as
stripeSize=7(64K)
DELL-Chris H
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
That is indeed where you would configure that stripe size, I also see that you do not have the Initialized checked, so that is good.
Guldstrand
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
Ok, ok...
I found this:
1. Delete the target virtual disk.
-F2 on the virtual disk tog get a context menu. Arrow to delete and hit enter
2. Recreate said virtual disk using the same RAID level *AND* the same stripe size
-F2 on the controller to get the context menu and create a new VD there.
3. DO NOT initialize. The initialization is what blanks out the RAID data.
What is stripe size?
Guldstrand
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
Does this look right for re-tagging?
If not, what do I need to change?
Guldstrand
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May 24th, 2022 08:00
Not sure yet, but no other errors shown.
I don't want to do anything wrong, that why i wait for further instructions. Hahaha!
Guldstrand
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May 25th, 2022 05:00
I have tried some solutions, but I do not seem to get around the "/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod not found" error.
And I have checked that "normal.mod" is in the specified path.
DELL-Young E
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May 25th, 2022 21:00
Hi from what I think it might be that the OS is damaged. There seems something wrong with the file system.
Guldstrand
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May 25th, 2022 23:00
I just checked again, and it seems that i DON'T have the file/mod normal.mod under "i386-pc/".
Can i copy/download it from somewhere?
DELL-Joey C
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May 26th, 2022 01:00
Hi @Guldstrand,
I found this from Ubuntu's forum about the error you had, this might help: https://dell.to/3z1KbRA. We're unsure we can help you further than this. This is beyond our capability.
DELL-Marco B
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May 26th, 2022 02:00
Yes you can ask to a software specialist for the backup
DELL-Marco B
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May 26th, 2022 02:00
Hello,
you cannot mix SATA and SAS drive on the same virtual disk. So if the virtual disk is made with SAS hard drive, you need to replace it with a SAS drive.
I cannot help you in for the backup job, the backup is not supported from our technical support scope.
Thanks
Marco
Guldstrand
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May 26th, 2022 02:00
The file needed (normal.mod) to boot into GRUB is not found at all in the path "/boot/grub/i386-pc/", all other files are there.
Is it possible to copy/download just that file in any way?
And now even 1 hard drive has been downgraded (flashes orange).
I'm so close now, I can see and access some files from the hard drives when I boot up with a LiveCD, but I also need to take a new backup of eg mysql databases.
How can I do this?
And can I replace the faulty SAS hard drive with an S-ATA hard drive? Please say "yes".