New drive

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Fri Apr 15 21:06:35 UTC 2005


Scott Mertens wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 11:13 -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
> 
>>Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>>>On 4/15/05, Scott Mertens <smertens at mho.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 10:08 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On 4/15/05, Scott Mertens <smertens at mho.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>I have just bought a new SATA HD and installed with the DOS software
>>>>>>included with it.  It was formatted as FAT32, I think I will use as a
>>>>>>backup for this linux box.  My intention is to boot into a Ghost CD and
>>>>>>image drive to new Drive.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>So question is is it OK to be formatted to FAT32 to copy an ex3 image
>>>>>>file to it.  Or should I mount it in Linux, format it as a ext3 and then
>>>>>>boot to Ghost and copy the image file to it?
>>>>>
>>>>>Actually it's pretty bad to be formatted FAT32 in this application. If
>>>>>you copy Linux files per se to the drive then since FAT32 doesn't
>>>>>support owner:group:world permissions and you'll lose that info and
>>>>>have a terrible time doing a restore.
>>>>
>>>>This is good to know!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Much better to format it ext3 and take advantage of the journaling for
>>>>>extra safety.
>>>>
>>>>Now I have to try to do some research to see how to mount and where?  I
>>>>have only one other drive, also SATA that RH is seeing as SCSI
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>My 2 cents,
>>>>
>>>>Ana a bargain at that rate!
>>>
>>>
>>>Well, there we go again with that 'strange hardware' stuff we talked
>>>about earlier. SATA drives are typically seen as SCSI devices so,
>>>assuming you have NO other SCSI in the system you might try (as root)
>>>
>>>fdisk /dev/sda
>>>
>>>and see what happens. If you find the drive (look carefull at the size
>>>it's reporting to make sure you think it's the right drive) then type
>>>'q' to quit, for now. At that point you're ready to do some
>>>partitioning and formating. If not found then there's two or more
>>>reasons:
>>>
>>>1) Your kernel doesn't have SATA support. (There you go, building
>>>kernels again!) ;-)
>>>
>>>2) Your kernel doesn't have SCSI support, or it must be loaded as a module.
>>>
>>>3) There is some other SCSI device at sda. Try fdisk /dev/sdb or sdc
>>>etc. and jsut poke around a bit, but be very careful with fdisk.
>>>
>>>A more formal way to look for the drive would be to run dmesg in a
>>>terminal and see if you can spot the system findign a SCSI drive
>>>during boot.
>>
>>I think you missed that, Mark.  His current drive (SATA) is being seen
>>as SCSI (which, as you point out, makes perfect sense as SATA drives
>>are treated as SCSI).
>>
>>Scott, SCSI, SATA, and damned near any storage media you can plug into
>>USB or firewire are all treated by Linux as SCSI devices.  Why?  Because
>>SCSI is the most flexible way of dealing with disparate devices.
>>
>>The first SCSI (or media treated as SCSI) by the kernel is assigned the
>>device name "/dev/sda" (SCSI disk "a").  The second will be "/dev/sdb"
>>(SCSI disk "b") and so on.  The odds are that your current SATA drive
>>(which contains your operating system) is /dev/sda.  The second one will
>>most likely be /dev/sdb.
>>
>>Mark's idea of using fdisk is logical.  If you do "fdisk -l /dev/sda",
>>you should see a summary of how big the drive is as well as the
>>partition table on it.  Similarly, you should be able to do an "fdisk -l
>>/dev/sdb" and see a similar thing, but you'll probably only see one
>>partition that's listed as "W95 FAT32".
> 
> 
> [root at RHServer01 ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda
> 
> Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
> /dev/sda2              14       24321   195254010   8e  Linux LVM
> 
> So if I am reading this right, it is telling me the first disk has two
> partitions on it.  sda1, and sda2

Yup.  That's correct.

> [root at RHServer01 ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
> 
> Disk /dev/sdb: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdb1   *           1       24792   199141708+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> [root at RHServer01 ~]#
> 
> This is the one I just added and formatted as Fat32.

Again, you've got it!

> Two questions come to mind.
> 1.  How can I tell what shares/directories are on sda2?  Like /home /usr
> etc.

Find the mountpoint and device name used for it (use "mount"...it'll
probably be something like "/dev/vg00/lvol1"), then simply use the
lvdisplay program on it:

	lvdisplay /dev/vg00/lvol1

> 2. sdb1 is showing as a boot device, this is the drive I intend on
> making a backup drive.  Do I need to do anything to mount it, or has it
> automounted?  Does it even matter given that you said earlier that Ghost
> will write block for block from drive to drive.

All that means is that the partition has the "bootable" _flag_ set.  It
isn't the boot disk.  The boot disk is determined by your BIOS settings.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-         If this is the first day of the rest of my life...         -
-                        I'm in BIG trouble!                         -
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