• How to access a disk with bad superblock Linux Ubuntu Debian Redhat CentOS ext3 ext4


    Have you ever tried mounting a partition that you exists but you get this error? mount: /mnt: can't read superblock on /dev/sda1. The superblock in this example was bad because the physical disk had corruption and bad blocks/sectors. However, the data was generally accessible and you can always try this trick below (with caution and no warranty). This is specifically for filesystems that place superblocks in multiple locations, which........
  • mdadm: add new device failed for /dev/sdb4 as 3: Invalid argument solution


    mdadm --manage /dev/md125 -a /dev/sdb4 mdadm: add new device failed for /dev/sdb4 as 3: Invalid argument Dec 19 01:23:48 storageboxtest kernel: [ 2328.854491] md: sdb4 does not have a valid v1.2 superblock, not importing! Dec 19 01:23:48 storageboxtest kernel: [ 2328.854499] md: md_import_device returned -22 #zero the superblock and try again! mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdb4 mdadm --ma........
  • Why SMART is not smart at all and doesn't properly predict disk errors that cause a kernel panic or crash


    Before getting into the output here is my typical experience with SMART, there is what I call a "bad disk" with pending and uncorrectable sectors that cannot be reallocated. It has caused a kernel panic and system crash repeatedly as we can see from the logs. But SMART says it has "PASSED" its self assessment. SMART is still useful to me but it is more about looking at Current_Pending_Sector. Any time I have had anything but 0 for that attribute it........
  • NFS Share Won't Mount Solution - mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 10.10.2.20:/tmp/nfsmount


    nfs mount failed: mount 10.10.2.20:/tmp/nfsmount /mnt/nfs/ mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 10.10.2.20:/tmp/nfsmount, missing codepage or helper program, or other error (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might need a /sbin/mount. helper program)  ........
  • mdadm frozen and doesn't realize array is dead/missing failed due to unplugged drives


    This was a surprising bug but I unplugged all drives for an array md127. At first it was just 1 drive and mdadm seemed to notice this. I unplugged the second drive taking the array offline but mdadm did not realize it was offline and still showed a non-existent disk as being part of it. This created problems trying to unmount it or even to stop this array with mdadm freezing. As for how to fix it I can only think of making sure you are not in a mounted path of........
  • mdadm zero-superblock to solve md device created on root device


    It is possible to tell mdadm to create an md device on a raw disk even though it will give you an error, it writes a superblock and this corrupts the partition table which can result in your system not booting. To fix it just zero the super-block on the offending device that you made the mistake in. Eg: /dev/sda mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sda It is also a way of starting fresh if you wanted to create a new array.........
  • Mount a SMB Samba share in fstab Linux Debian/Ubuntu/Centos


    Add the following to fstab where 192.168.1.125/Media is the samba share and where /home/homeuser/Downloads is where you want to mount. Change user and pass to what is needed (if no pass is required it still works fine with the below). //192.168.1.125/Media /home/homeuser/Downloads cifs user=guest,pass=bla 0 0 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.1.125/Media, &nbs........
  • Centos 6 how to guide convert LVM non-RAID into mdadm 1/10 RAID array live without reinstalling


    Here is the scenario you or a client have a remote machine that was installed as a standard/default minimal Centos 6.x machine on a single disk with LVM for whatever reason. Often many people do not know how to install it to a RAID array so it is common to have this problem and why reinstall if you don't need to? In some cases on a remote system you can't easily reinstall without physical or KVM access. So in this case you add a second physical or disk or already ha........
  • Debian UUID not working


    Neither the blkid or the UUID internal to mdadm work to automount for some reason in Debian partprobe doesn't work but was a good suggestion from: http://pato.dudits.net/2008/11/03/special-device-uuidxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-does-not-exist-especially-with-lvm mount: special device /dev/disk/by-uuid/431b9b96-29e8f298-e89bd504-7065bddd does not exist mdadm -D /dev/md_d12 mdadm: metadata format 00.90 unknown, ignored. /dev/md_d12: &nb........
  • mdadm RAID 1 adventures


    I separated the 2 drives in the RAID 1 array. 1 is the old one /dev/sda and is out of date, while the separated other one /dev/sdc was in another drive and mounted and used with more data (updated). I wonder how mdadm will handle this: usb-storage: device scan complete md: md127 stopped. md: bind md: md127: raid array is not clean -- starting background reconstruction raid1: raid set md127 active with 1 out of 2 m........
  • mdadm Linux Software RAID QuickStart Guide


    Create New RAID 1 Array: First setup your partitions (make sure they are exactly the same size) In my example I have sda3 and sdb3 which are 500GB in size. mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 mdadm: array /dev/md2 started. Check Status Of The Array *Note I already have other arrays md0 and md1. You can see below that md2 is syn........
  • mdadm can you downgrade the superblock?


    Why would you want to downgrade the superblock? Old mdadm verisons like mdadm 2.5.6 only use the 0.90 superblock/metadata and new versions use 1,1.0,1.1 and 1.2 superblocks by default. There are some annoying caveats with this, first of all the new superblocks (later than 0.90) CANNOT be read by GRUB, so you won't even be able to install GRUB. Even worse, old versions of mdadm CANNOT automatically detect arrays even if they were created with a new version of mdadm with th........
  • Why does mdadm have two sets of UUID's?


    Which one does the OS care about? blkid says the UUID is "787f1fa4-b010-4d77-a010-795b42884f56" while md insists its UUID is "4d96dd3b:deb5d555:7adb93cb:ce9182d9" When in doubt, do we assume the OS takes the one from blkid? /dev/md0: UUID="787f1fa4-b010-4d77-a010-795b42884f56" TYPE="ext3" [root@localhost ~]# mdadm -D /dev/md0 /dev/md0: Version : 0.90 &........
  • Debian 5.04 RAID 1 mdadm boot problem GRUB error


    I successfully created a single RAID 1 partition which includes /boot inside it and my root directory through the Debian installer. It said GRUB installed successfully but when I try booting the OS it seems GRUB can't read anything. When trying to boot from GRUB GRUB Loading stage 1.5. GRUB loading, please wait... Error 2 I get "Error 2" when trying to boot Debian. I also notice from a LiveCD that........
  • Centos 5.5 RAID 1 boot issue


    I installed 5.5 with a 300GB RAID 1 partition (boot is also on this partition). It booted up fine the first few times until after I used a Live CD and accessed the array, and it became named /dev/md127 for some reason. Now whenI boot into CentOS I get a kernel panic and different errors, once I got "invalid superblock", even though the array is fine (it didn't happen again, probably because I was sure to dismount and stop the mdadm array properly). Here's what........
  • chroot into an off-line Linux version using a LiveCD/USB


    It's not just as simple as running the chroot command, you need to ensure the /proc and /dev entries are passed through and populated to the chroot environment. Step 1 - Mount Your Off-lineOS mount /dev/sda1 /mnt Step 2 - Mount Proc mount -t proc none /mnt/proc Step 3 - Mount Dev Most guides will tell you to use this: mount -o bind /dev /mnt//dev but that doesn't work for some reason in many cases: mount: wron........
  • mdadm Linux Software RAID auto-detect and assemble RAID Array


    mdadm --assemble --scan mdadm: /dev/md/diaghost05102010:2 has been started with 2 drives. mdadm: /dev/md/diaghost05102010:1 has been started with 2 drives. mdadm: /dev/md/diaghost05102010:0 has been started with 2 drives. -bash-3.1# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [multipath] md125 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1] 14658185 blocks super 1.2........
  • Convert HDD/Hard Drive Partition(s) into non-RAID into RAID 1 using existing data without data loss and without reformatting.


    Before we start I take no responsibility for this, you should have a backup and if you make a mistake during this process you could wipe out all of your data. So backup somewhere else before starting this as a precaution, or make sure it's data you could afford to lose. The RAID 1 Setup (Hardware Wise) I've already setup my 2 x 1TB (Seagate) drives with identical partitions, make sure your new hard drive (the empty one) is setup like your curr........
  • Using a Mac OSX DMG Image in Windows and Converting to Standard ISO Format use dmg2iso


    The dmg format is silly and annoying to work with, why couldn't Apple stick with the .iso standard? Anyway, there's an excellent Linux and Windows based tool to convert it back to a normal .iso Image called dmg2iso I'll only cover theLinux version although the Windows pre-built binary works the same way. Download dmg2iso here for free (from the author's website) It's just silly and doesn't make sense that Ubuntu doe........
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