Separated Mirrored Drives won't mount

[jeffkelly]

Hello All,

I am still working on my NW4.11 server and am doing a few disaster tests. One of the tests consisted of busting the mirrored set (synchronized) and booting from each drive separately (simulating a failed drive in the cluster).

What I found after breaking the mirrored set was both drives will launch Netware, load drivers, etc., then prompt me for the server name and routing number. I type the requested information and the server will go to the console w/o mounting any volumes. I've tried to manually mount them from the command line and install utility without success. To make matters more confusing, the volumes will mount if I have both unmirrored drives connected.

What the heck is going on? I expected either drive to fully boot and mount its volumes. Otherwise, how can I replace a faulty drive and create a new mirrored set?

Thanks in advance to all who reply.

Happy New Year!

J

 

[sstoppel]

It sounds like the DOS partition is on each disk (good) and the partitions are set active on both (also good) but the sys volume spans the two disks, which means that they aren't actually mirrored. (very bad)

Is there a single partition on each drive?

 

[jeffkelly]

I created a DOS partition (2048 MB) and a Netware partition (68 GB) on each drive. The Netware partition is chopped into three volumes. If the volumes span both discs, I didn't do it intentionally. When I look at mirroring (mirror status), it says Logical Partition #1 is fully synchronized. Let me try again. I thought is said #1 and #3 sync'd prior to my breaking the mirrored set. Maybe it's fixed now? Will post the results after dinner.

J

 

[marvhuffaker]

ALL servers will report Mirror status on partiton #1 as fully synchronized - this is even with no mirroring. The fact that you only say there is Partion #1 mirrored tells me that you don't have it mirrored at all.

If you actually have mirrored drives, you'll see each partition listed in the status. For example, if you had a partition mirrored to 5 separate drives, your mirror status should show 5 listings and their individual status. (Yes you can mirror a partition to more than 2 disks. Not necessarily practical, but you can do it)

I'm with SSTOPPEL, sounds like you spanned SYS across both disks.




Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[jeffkelly]

Well, the behavior is still the same. If I spanned partitions, I'm not sure how I did it.

Under install/Modify disk partitions and hot fix:

Device # 0 [V321-A1-D0:0] Seagate ST373207LW rev:0003
Device # 1 [V321-A1-D1:0] Seagate ST373207LW rev:0003
---------------------------------------------------------
Under each drive (identical) the disk partition info is:

Big DOS; OS/2; Win95 Partition 0 - 260 2047.3 MB
NetWare Partition: 261 - 8923 67954.6 MB

---------------------------------------------------------
Under Mirror/Unmirror disk partitions:

Mirrored: Device 1,0
Both are In Sync when I look at the mirroring status

---------------------------------------------------------
Name: Sys
Volume Information:
Block size: 64 KB
Status: Mounted
File Compression: On
Block Suballocation: On
Data Migration: Off

---------------------------------------------------------
I'll spare you the hotfix info unless you want it. Durning installation, I partitioned each drive individually, then mirrored them. What did I do wrong?

Thanks,

J

 

[jeffkelly]

Should I have created a separate partition for each volume...then do the same on the second drive...then mirror the two?

As you can see, I have one Netware partition with three volumes on it.

 

[sstoppel]

No, you can and should have multiple volumes in a partition.

At first glance it sounds as though you did it correctly.

"To make matters more confusing, the volumes will mount if I have both unmirrored drives connected."

That is what is telling me that there is information for the volume on both. If you connect them both and boot, what is the total uncompressed capacity of your NetWare volumes?

 

[jeffkelly]

Bad news...

The primary hard drive will no longer detect. It started flaking out yesterday and, thankfully, it remained operational long enough from me to copy all files to my laptop. I have another hard drive...which I plugged in, but as described above, the mirror will not mount the volumes.

Sooo....I have an oportunity here. It takes about an hour to install/patch everything so I'm going to wipe the drive and start over.

I've learned a lot on this forum, but since I'm starting over, let me lob a few questions:

1. Is it better to build one hard drive (leaving the second unplugged) then mirror?
2. Is it better to chop the space into separate partitions (one for each volume)? I presently have two: DOS and NW. The NW partition is segmented into three volumes: sys, vol1, vol2.
3. If #1 above is yes, then outside of creating the DOS partition, marking it active and creating the NW partition on the second drive (same size as drive 1), do I have to create the volumes as well or will mirroring create them? I can't remember what I did on the first build other than establishing the mirrored set when prompted by the NW installer.

You all are great! Thanks so much for you expertise.

J

 

[TheLad]

From my point of view, the answers to your questions are:

1. Yes, but create the DOS partition and "mirror" it manually on the 2nd hard disk before you mirror NetWare. Create the DOS partition so it is the same size as on the 1st hard disk

2. No, have 1 DOS partition and 1 NetWare partition.

3. You have to create the NetWare partition on the 2nd drive (same size as the NetWare partition on the 1st disk) and the mirroring will create the NetWare volumes and data. Novell actually suggest that the 2nd disk should start off blank before you create the NetWare partition but as you are "mirroring" the DOS partition as well, it will not be blank.

There is tips on NetWare 4.11 mirroring in the document below:

http://www.novell.com/documentation/nw4/docui/index.html#../superenu/data/homigz03.html

--------------------------------------
"Insert funny comment in here!"
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[sstoppel]

Congrats on getting your data off.

 

[jeffkelly]

I'm back. Built the server one HDD at a time. The first HDD now fully boots and is patched to SP9. I just installed the second HDD, created an active bootable partition, created a Netware partition and began the mirroring process. The message on the console is "Remirroring partition #2". It won't take long since there isn't any data on the server yet. Will let you know....

 

[jeffkelly]

The mirrored drive is not mounting the volumes as before. The primary drive is, however. When booting w/ only the primary drive, NW detected the missing mirror and asked if I wanted to mount sys (I said no). The mirror gets as far as loading the CDROM driver and then gives the error "SERVER-4.11-1649: Volume SYS could NOT be mounted. Some or all volume segments cannot be located. VRepair won't work because there are no volumes defined as far as NW is concerned. Below is my simple startup and autoexec files:


Startup.ncf

; The following lines were moved or added by the NetWare Support Pack
LOAD C:\NWSERVER\DIAG411.NLM
LOAD C:\NWSERVER\PK411.NLM
LOAD C:\NWSERVER\PVER4.NLM
LOAD C:\NWSERVER\CPUCHECK.NLM
; End of modifications made by NetWare Support Pack installation

SET RESERVED BUFFERS BELOW 16 MEG=200
LOAD IDEATA.HAM INT=E PORT=1F0
LOAD ADPT160M.HAM SLOT=1
LOAD IDECD.CDM
LOAD SGSCSI.CDM
;load MAC
SET Maximum Physical Receive Packet Size = 2048
SET Minimum Packet Receive Buffers = 500
SET Auto Register Memory Above 16 Megabytes = On


Autoexec.ncf

; The following lines were moved or added by the NetWare Support Pack
SET Maximum Concurrent Disk Cache Writes = 500
SET Dirty Disk Cache Delay Time = 0.5
SET Maximum Concurrent Directory Cache Writes = 100
; End of modifications made by NetWare Support Pack installation

set Time Zone = MST7MDT
set Daylight Savings Time Offset = 1:00:00
set Start Of Daylight Savings Time = (APRIL SUNDAY FIRST 2:00:00 AM)
set End Of Daylight Savings Time = (OCTOBER SUNDAY LAST 2:00:00 AM)
set Default Time Server Type = SINGLE

# Note: The Time zone information mentioned above
# should always precede the SERVER name.

set Bindery Context = O=CA_UPLINK
file server name ROCK
ipx internal net 45899467
;LOAD CE1000 SLOT=3 FRAME=Ethernet_802.2 NAME=CE1000_1_E82
;BIND IPX CE1000_1_E82 NET=E3975171
LOAD CE1000 SLOT=3 FRAME=Ethernet_802.3 NAME=CE1000_1_E83
BIND IPX CE1000_1_E83 NET=1495B060
LOAD IPXRTR routing=NLSP
mount all

SET Maximum Packet Receive Buffers = 2000

------------------------------------------------------------------
Mirror Status says "Logical Partition #1 is fully synchronized"

Outside of completely installing NW on the second drive, I'm not sure where to go from here.

 

[jeffkelly]

Hold the phone...

On a whim, I ran server -na on the mirror and it detected the volumes (same message as primary drive...this time I said yes). I downed the server and launched server.exe again - this time without the switches. Netware came all the way up w/o prompting me and mounted all the volumes. Hmmmm.....

Thoughts?

 

[jeffkelly]

Now the server says: Logical Partition #3 is being remirrored after typing "Mirror Status". Hmmm...

This should be the correct partition number, but for some reason, the first mirroring said it was partition #2.

 

[jeffkelly]

I checked it again today. This time the primary drive wouldn't mount, but the backup would. I downed the server, typed exit, then typed server again to launch Netware. This time the primary mounted the volumes. Hmmmm....