problem with disks in 1850

[Christophe Chisogne]

Rudy Gevaert wrote:
> As this is a Debian powered machine, I can't get much help from Dell 
> support.

<note>
Same problem here. I dont understand why Dell absolutely wants to use
and develop things that are RH-specific and obviously cause problems
(RH-kernels, RH-rpm, RH-calls in scripts, ...). Installing OpenMangage
on Debian-based distros (and others) is nearly impossible, even
if omsa 5.0 is improving and finally goes in the good direction
(drivers in recent std kernels at kernel.org). This means that
Dell makes hw raid monitoring on Debian distros quite hard :-/
</note>

> Using dellmgr the replaced disk show as online and thus fully rebuilt.

So, your array is fine.

> I also installed megarc, but this shows:

<note>
megarc is the only usable tool I can use to monitor our PE 1850 hw raid.
Above all, it's not provided by Dell, but by LSI. And to remain polite,
I wont say my opinion about dellmgr :-(
</note>

> framboos:~/megaraid# ./megarc -getRbldRate -a0
> (...)
>          RebuildRate of Adapter-0 is 30

This is the rebuild Rate used when rebuild is necessary. It does not
mean the raid is rebuilding. So don't worry, your array is most
probably 100% rebuild, not 30%.

What you really want is not getRbldRate but showRbld
# ./megarc -showRbld -a0
(I read you may need ctrl-C, so not easy to script)

> And in proc I also get :
> framboos:~/megaraid# cat /proc/megaraid/hba0/rebuild-rate
> Rebuild Rate: [30%]

Same remark here. It has nothing to do with the usual /proc/mdstat
infos you get on software raid.

<note>
With newer kernel modules (megaraib_mbox), I can't see those usefull
infos on /proc or /sys :-(
</note>

> What can I do next to know the cause of the problem?

Read megarc help, then use megarc to get more infos about the disks.

If some lights are blinking, you'll find descriptions in the dell 
docs you got on the CDs when buying the PE1850.

Christophe,
(another Belgian Linux User)