MDAdm. Working with RAID in Ubuntu

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Category: Servers
Published: Monday, 21 January 2019 14:00
Written by Super User
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Sometimes when configuring servers you must configure RAID.

On branded servers they are often harware, but nonetheless, they often have to deal with a software raid.

 

Building a RAID

Lets build on the server RAID1.

First, create the same partition on the sdb and sdc drives

  

#fdisk /dev/sdb

command (m for help): n

Partition type:

p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)

e extended

Select (default p): p

Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1

First sector (2048-16777215, default 2048):

Using default value 2048

Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-16777215, default 16777215): +5G

Command (m for help): t

Hex code (type L to list codes): 83

Changed system type of partition 1 to 83

 

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

 

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

Syncing disks.

Similarly, we will do for the sdc disk

Install the RAID utility

# apt-get install mdadm

  

Now we will build RAID 1

# mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

  

After the assembly, you can view the RAID state by using the command

# cat /proc/mdstat

  

As a result, we must get something similar to

personalities : [raid1]

md0 : active raid1 sdc1[1] sdb1[0]

5238720 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: <none>

  

Now you can create a file system on a created RAID partition and connect it to the system.

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/md0

# mkdir /mnt/raid

# mount /dev/md0 /mnt/raid

  

Also, to check the correctness of the RAID work, we will create a file in the RAID partition:

# touch /mnt/raid/test.txt

  

Error while working with RAID

Once we have created the RAID, we have defined it as /dev/md0, but after rebooting this device will not be in the system, and /dev/md127 will appear instead. Here you can either use this device name in the future or explain to the system that our RAID partition is /dev/md0 and not otherwise. To do this, execute the command:

# mdadm -Db /dev/md0 > /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

  

As a result of this command, the /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf file will contain a string

ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=1.2 name=ub-4:0 UUID=7da67e34:3d29e3a1:bdf36edd:6be26e60

  

Після цього необхідно оновити образ initramfs:

# update-initramfs -u

Now after reboot, our RAID partition will be defined as /dev/md0.

  

RAID degradation and recovery

Let's see how you can make the degradation of the RAID. Naturally, in a real system, the drive usually crashed itself and there is no need to specifically declare it to be fatal. But we will use mdadm utility features and announce one disk of RAID - /dev/sdb1 bad.

# mdadm /dev/md0 --fail /dev/sdb1

Let's see now the state of RAID

# cat /proc/mdstat

  

We should see that /dev/sdb1 has some problems and the RAID is degraded:

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]

md0 : active raid1 sdb1[2](F) sdc1[1]

5238720 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

unused devices: <none>

  

Now using fdisk, we create /dev/sdd a partition of the same size as /dev/sdc1. Then remove /dev/sdb1 from RAID

# mdadm /dev/md0 --remove /dev/sdb1

 

And add a new partition /dev/sdd1

# mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdd1

  

If we immediately look at the RAID state

# cat /proc/mdstat

We will see that we have again two normal disks in RAID and its synchronization is currently happening:

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]

md0 : active raid1 sdd1[2] sdc1[1]

5238720 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

[=>...................] recovery = 6.2% (329984/5238720) finish=1.2min speed=65996K/sec

unused devices: <none>

If we now mount our RAID

# mount /dev/md0 /mnt/raid/

We'll see that the file we created before is present and nothing was missing.

# ls /mnt/raid/

lost+found test.txt