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Date:      Fri, 02 May 2014 11:34:40 +0000
From:      Benny Goemans <benny.goemans@belgacom.net>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Intel Matrix RAID metadata messed up by geom
Message-ID:  <c9cd04b3d1f64aa7c404e16cc21ce778@webmail.malavon.com>
In-Reply-To: <2eaf47c4d979b94ae13d6a83c7169e73@webmail.malavon.com>
References:  <2eaf47c4d979b94ae13d6a83c7169e73@webmail.malavon.com>

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It seems I have sent this mail three times (according to the archives). 
My apologies, I hadn't correctly subscribed to this list the first time 
and didn't see them appear in the mailing list.

Aside from that, anyone having any ideas about how I could fix this?

Thanks,
Benny Goemans

Benny Goemans schreef op 2014-04-29 19:53:
> (I originally sent this to the geom mailinglist, but I assume that
> list isn't meant for user questions; I've also added some more info)
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> First some background:
> 
> I'm running 2 rather big raid (well, software raid) arrays, one RAID 0
> and one RAID 5. Up to now this didn't pose much problems, aside from
> the occasional rebuilding for which I needed to boot my fallback
> windows OS. I was happy with this, but since I'm lagging behind this
> much in version (8- will soon disappear) I assumed that I could at
> least try upgrading to 10 and see what happens. So, I did:
> 
> * used freebsd-update to get updates, merge and install
> * rebooted into BSD 10 kernel
> * I see messages from GEOM passing by, noticing my raid arrays
> * I get warnings about read-only filesystems and I realise that geom
> doesn't support writing to ICH RAID 5 arrays (which I read when I
> wanted to upgrade to 9, but seemed to have forgotten)
> 
> I figure, no harm done, I'll just boot a 8.4 disk and reinstall the
> kernel. So I reboot ... only to find out that my drives show up as
> INCOMPATIBLE in the ICH configuration utility. I'm assuming that GEOM
> decided to overwrite critical metadata with a version that my
> motherboard doesn't support.
> I never ran any geom tools, never saw a warning in the boot which
> would have prompted me to abort. It just did.
> 
> So, I have two questions:
> 1a) isn't this a bug? I'm assuming that GEOM shouldn't at least
> overwrite metadata without allowing the user to abort, especially not
> with a newer version that might not be supported anymore
> 1b) does this also happen when booting the live cd? if it does, it
> doesn't feel right
> 2) is there anyone out there who can help me get this meta data back
> to a version my mainboard supports? I really need this system up and
> running again (as it's my main pc) without having to reinstall
> everything, which would take ages. I do have backups of most critical
> data, but I'd still like to have the non/less-critical data as well.
> 
> Some extra info:
> mainboard: Asus P5WDG 2 WS, with latest (official) 0805 bios
> ICH: 5.1.2, ICH7R
> 
> I can boot the system with a BSD 10 memdisk and access the data on the
> BSD partitions, so it's not gone. For the ntfs partitions I'm still
> looking for a solution, but as I said I'd rather get the system up and
> running again than try to backup everything that I need and rebuild.
> The risk that I'm forgetting something is simply too big.
> 
> What I'm currently doing/trying:
> * backing up as much as I can
> * trying to find more information of the metadata written by geom or
> the ICH, without much luck
> ** I figure the changes won't be huge between what GEOM has written
> and what the original data was; if I find a datasheet I might try to
> fix it manually
> * figuring out a way to restore the correct metadata without trying to
> understand geom source code, as this is _way_ over my skill set; it
> would likely take years for me to figure it out
> * checking out unofficial bios'es for my mainboard that may or may not
> have a more recent ICH on board; last resort only though as these may
> put me off even worse (with no more access to these disks at all)
> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> Benny Goemans
> 
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