On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 10:41:58AM -0500, Sam Carleton wrote:
> I have convered an old machine that was a Windows server into a NetBSD
> mail server.  The machine has a 3ware 5000 series RAID card in it.
> This morning I came to ssh into the machine and low and behold the
> machine has crashed because the mirrored drives got out of sync.
>
> Is this normal?  My migration from the old mail server (lacking
> mirrored drives) to this machine is not complete, but if the way
> NetBSD hands things when the RAID is out of sync is by crashing, I
> don't see much point in the RAID drives.  Anyone have any thoughts on
> this?  

I've dealt with broken RAIDs on three occations now; twice with software
RAIDFrame shipped with NetBSD, and once with a hardware RAID controller
(Compaq SMART-2SL).

> This getting out of sync did happen with the Windows, but the Windows
> server did not crash, there was a program that would send me an email
> and I would tell the controller to rebuild the RAID and all was well
> again.  Is this possible with netBSD?

it certainly is with RAIDFrame.  in fact, my failed RAID1 continued to
limp along for another month until I was able to copy the data off the
surviving component.  in another instance a component of a RAID1 which
was powered down for several months failed, yet I had little trouble
recovering the data, which would have been completely gone if not for
RAIDFrame.

hardware RAID is a different issue: AFAIK the support varies by
controller.  my cac(4) device reported "soft errors; array may be
degraded", but no user tools currently exist under NetBSD to force a
rebuild or to get any more information.  however, the system didn't lock
up or reboot.  it just keep spurting soft error messages in my logs
until I rebooted into the DOS-utility to trigger a rebuild.

your crashing experience with the 3ware is definitely not the norm.

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com
  "someday the industry will have throbbing frontal lobes and will be able
  to write provably correct software.  also, I want a pony." -- Zach Brown