How to add a second disk to Proliant MicroServer

[cabous]

Hi all,
I'm trying to add another hard disk to my microserver so that I'll have the 250Gb standard disk and a 1TB disk. I will not be doing RAID - just want two separate disks that I can operate individually.

I have formatted my 1TB as ext4 but am now having difficulty in mounting it (trying to do so in /opt/data). I get an error saying '/dev/sdb1 is already mounted or /opt/data is busy'.

I know enough about Linux to be very dangerous - will be most grateful for any assistance.

[Sinbad]

Hi all,
I'm trying to add another hard disk to my microserver so that I'll have the 250Gb standard disk and a 1TB disk. I will not be doing RAID - just want two separate disks that I can operate individually.

I have formatted my 1TB as ext4 but am now having difficulty in mounting it (trying to do so in /opt/data). I get an error saying '/dev/sdb1 is already mounted or /opt/data is busy'.

I know enough about Linux to be very dangerous - will be most grateful for any assistance.

Which os?

[fskmh]

Hi all,
I have formatted my 1TB as ext4 but am now having difficulty in mounting it (trying to do so in /opt/data). I get an error saying '/dev/sdb1 is already mounted or /opt/data is busy'.

If it were me, I would rather mount the partition under /mnt/blah or /media/blah and then bind-mount it to wherever it should appear, or even do a symlink (which brings another set of considerations to the table). You could also go with a directory name that does not normally occur in the typical Linux FSH like /data. (This is what I normally do with my RAID arrays for the sake of consistency.)

1. Check if the partition has not already been auto-mounted with:

df -h

2. If not, try and mount it in a directory (as root) that is unlikely to have programs already accessing it:

mkdir -p /mnt/sdb1
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

Return to step 1 to see if the partition is mounted. If that works you can add it to /etc/fstab with the necessary mount options like "noatime" or whatever.

[mxc]

Type in "mount" to get a list of mounted points and see if /dev/sdb1 is already mounted or what is mounted under /opt/data. On most Linux implementations you need to be root to mount a partition otherwise you will get some kind of error or it will look like nothing has happened.

It could be that /dev/sdb1 is not the partition you think it is. The scsi disk naming conventions is such that disk ids can be swapped around when new disks ,even USB drives, are added and then rebooted. This is why UUID's or labels are used to identity disks these days in /etc/fstab and not device names as assigned by kernel modules.

To get a list of available partitions, mounted or not, type "fdisk -l" as root - that is L in lowercase for list.


PHP Training

[ponder]

What's in your /etc/fstab file?

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Which os?

If you are running a regular linux distro then google fstab. If you are using OpenElec you should use the autostart script and add mount commands in there.

I mount my network drives like this and works well:

#! /bin/sh
(sleep 20; \
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.103/Series /storage/tvshows -o username=media,password=media123
)&
(sleep 2; \
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.103/Movies /storage/videos -o username=media,password=media123
)&
(sleep 2; \
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.103/Music /storage/music -o username=media,password=media123
)&

[cabous]

le oops...

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

[ponder]

le oops...

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

What's in your /etc/fstab file?

Do we have to pull this out of you with pliers?

[cabous]

Hi GrandM,
I've gone through the steps:

1. Only the std 250Gb disk is mounted
2. I get the same message telling me that the mount point is busy or that the device is busy.

This is my first time working with RAID and the first thing I learnt was that I can't just add it in the bay and try to format - I had to put it into a hdisk enclosure, partition and format ext4. I then added it back to the bay but still can't see it at all.

I want to use the microserver mainly for backups. My 1TB will have all my backup data and then I'll make sure stuff like photo's and family videos are backed up to the 250Gb as well. When I have the cash I'll buy another 1TB and then have a proper RAID 1 or 0.

[cabous]

Hi mxc,
This is the output from the fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/mapper/35000c5001620695a-part1: 1000.2 GB, 1000203091968 bytes
26 heads, 24 sectors/track, 3130643 cylinders, total 1953521664 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x86768889

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/mapper/35000c5001620695a-part1p1 2048 1953521663 976759808 83 Linux

Disk /dev/mapper/35000c5004b426b2f-part2p1: 2011 MB, 2011168768 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 244 cylinders, total 3928064 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000


Disk /dev/mapper/35000c5001620695a-part1p1: 1000.2 GB, 1000202043392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121600 cylinders, total 1953519616 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

I notice though that somehow the file didn't capture the message "Disk /dev/mapper/35000c5001620695a-part1p1 doesn't contain a valid partition table".

I have rebooted after the format so it should've re-read the partition table... What can I do to check the integrity?

[MyWorld]

I will not be doing RAID - just want two separate disks that I can operate individually.

This is my first time working with RAID and the first thing I learnt was that I can't just add it in the bay and try to format

Now which is it? RAID or not?
Answer ponder, what is in your /etc/fstab?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...gANewHardDrive


Please post as much detail as possible, not just bits and pieces.

Is it a new drive? What was on it previously?

Did you partition it?
How did you format it, what command did you use?

[cabous]

Yello,
fstab is quite boring... and empty

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=79d267fc-9619-4bcf-98d6-86eecb1c7621 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=091c4c3a-6ab6-456d-bcdc-ac245083a770 none swap sw 0 0

[MyWorld]

Fire up gparted, repartition the disk, reformat it, add this to your /etc/fstab and reboot:

gksu gparted

To get the disk UUID:

sudo blkid

Add the UUID of the 1TB disk into fstab like so:

gksu gedit

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=79d267fc-9619-4bcf-98d6-86eecb1c7621 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=091c4c3a-6ab6-456d-bcdc-ac245083a770 none swap sw 0 0
# Your new disk here
UUID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX /opt/data ext4 defaults 0 1

Reboot and it should now be fixed.

[MyWorld]

And... is it sorted?

[cabous]

Neep - still giving me carrots.

Firstly, excuses for not giving you guys more info to start with - my time is spread thin between a 2 yr old and an 8 week old baby and a wife that wants attention In fact, my pants is still wet after burping my son but I figured I'd quickly give you guys more details

I don't want to set up my system with RAID at this point - though the main purpose for the microserver is redundancy of critical data (family photo's etc on both the 250GB and 1TB). RAID will come later when I can afford another 1TB.

My 1TB used to be in an enclosure. I firstly tried formatting the disk while it was in the microserver (using fdisk and mkfs (also tried from within webmin's disk management module)) but I kept getting that 'device busy' error. So I figured maybe it's because it's in a RAID set up so I moved it back to its enclosure and partitioned and formatted it from my laptop with an earlier version of Ubuntu (11.x methinks).

So, then I moved it back to the server but I still couldn't mount it but all the commands I throw at it (mount and fstab) doesn't even see that disk.

So, just now I've fdisk'ed it again (The first sector I could choose was 2048, is this right? Also, it shows the disk as 930GB??) while it's still in the microboxen but just as soon as I want to format it (sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb1) (straight after fdisk) it throws me the same error "/dev/sdb1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a file system here!"

O yes, I also changed the BIOS setting for IDE configuration - I changed it from AHCI to IDE (I figured that maybe the disk is being accessed on a low level). So, given that piece of information - which setting do you guys recommend for my intended setup? AHCI or IDE?

Thanks for all the help & time so far!