Title: Re: RAID-specific "-9998" errors
(enableRAID and addToRAID
At 7:56 PM -1000 6/5/07, Sergio Trejo wrote:
Was it my misuse of the diskutil
command-line tool?
No I answered this already. Your partition map was not
adequate.
Was it that I shouldn't have been
using diskutil in the first place to manage RAID volumes? Or was it
several steps before using diskutil (e.g., I probably really shouldn't
have used Disk Utility app to create the partition maps to begin with
and should have used a tool such as pdisk)?
pdisk only works with Apple PArtition Maps. If you have an Intel
map you may not want this. ;)
If a budding Mac OS X Server admin wants
to manipulate physical discs such that they can be logically
partitioned to include one but no more than one RAID mirror (using
Apple's software RAID version 2 which is included in Mac OS X Server
10.4.9 -- on an Xserve computer, not an Apple fiber channel-based
Xserve RAID storage machine), what tool(s) should be used for RAID
mirror manipulation and management and what tools should be avoided?
diskutil / Dis Utility
Good adage to be reminded of, thanks. I
haven't been using Disk Utility for any type of RAID creation,
manipulation or destruction actions ... I have only used the command
line. However, following Josh's article on AFP548.com about Apple
RAID, the article doesn't state that the Disk Utility GUI-based app
should be avoided at all costs
Who said that it should be avoided at all costs? Why are you
resorting to reading hyperbole into my posts?
and in all contextes with respect
to RAID sys admin:
On Mac OS X there are two main interfaces for dealing with
disks, Disk Utility and its command line counterpart
diskutil. As was the case on Mac OS X 10.3, the diskutil
tool can perform a few more functions than Disk Utility. The gap has
narrowed though, and for many tasks it is far simpler to use Disk
Utility's GUI. For the examples in this article we will use both tools
where appropriate. A safe rule of thumb when dealing with the
differences between the two tools though is that the non-destructive
creation and removal tools for dealing with raid sets and members
exist only in diskutil. Additionally, there are some cases
where Disk Utility will become confused and out of sync with the
status of raid sets. In those instances you can typically clear things
up by restarting Disk Utility.
However, the article does say this about
the -9998 error (the same one which I received when attempting to
perform a diskutil command with the enableRAID verb):
Really the only two situations in which I have seen
the enableraid command fail is when the disk is slap full of
data or if the Mac O9 drivers are installed. In these cases you
will get errors like the following:
josh$ sudo diskutil enableraid mirror disk2s10
Changing filesystem size on disk 'disk2s10'...
Attempting to change filesystem size from 18232721408 to 18234343424
bytes
Filesystem grow failed, 1
Disk Management could not shrink the filesystem to fit the new raid
headers
Error enabling disk to raid Invalid request
(-9998)
Because of the partition structure. As I said, examine the
partition maps and it's all self-evident.
In the case of my non-RAID partition
which I had recently restored using asr from a compressed and checksum
verified disc image snapshot,
asr does not restore/copy disks, it restores/copies
volumes.
dd is the tool that you'd use to copy/restore an device.
while I don't know what Josh meant
semantically and quantitatively as "slap full of data", in
my case the percentage of data use on the volume relative to its total
capacity was on the order of 4% (very small relatively speaking) so I
don't think this would qualify as "slap full of data".
Furthermore, Disk Utility in Mac OS X Server 10.4.9 does not allow one
to create new partition members whose volumes residing on those
partitions include the optional "Mac OS 9 drivers" (unlike
Disk Utility on Mac OS X 10.4.9).
Yes it does.
And no it doesn't and never did.
You partition disk devices. Not volumes.
The OS 9 drivers aren't written to volumes but to specific
partitions on the device.
Devices with these partitions have very different partitions than
those w/o them.
Why not experiment and see for yourself??? Use `diskutil
list`.
Are there any reliable books or on-line
Wikis / PDF documents (besides merely man pages) that cover the
appropriate tools that should be used for both setting up partition
maps on physical discs which discs will included one and only one
partition to be included in a RAID mirror, and the tools to use for
manipulating those RAID volumes?
What's wrong w the man pages?
Seriously, this is rather simple, easy to understand material,
covered by the man pages and diskutil's usage (--help)
Is it a simply a matter of using
pdisk rather than Disk Utility to initialize a partition map correctly
(and then afterwards diskutil is fine to use with its RAID-related
verbs)?
See above.
I do have Amit Singh's Mac OS X
Essentials but his main coverage of Apple RAID on page 344 is in the
context of setting up a RAID device configured for
booting.
Why would it be different if you didn't boot? He does cover very
nicely this material and answers your questions about what's going
on.
--
-dhan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan
Shoop AIM: iWiring
Systems & Networks
Architect
http://www.ustsvs.com/
email@hidden
http://www.iwiring.net/
1-714-363-1174
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