Greetings,

After searching the forums I didn't find the exact answer I was looking for, so I thought i'd come here and ask.

I am currently running CentOS v5.3 (64-bit) with a RAID 1 configuration. The drives are also partitioned in half (with Vista on the other half).

I recently had to remove one of the hard drives in order to replace my video card. Upon reboot, I found that the RAID 1 array (software RAID, Intel chipset IHC7) was no longer in sync. I was able to boot into Vista and use Dell's matrix raid software to resync the drives. However, upon booting into CentOS, I am taken to a command prompt with the follownig error messages:

fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda5
Kernel alive [FAILED]
An error occured during the file system check.
Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot when you leave the shell
Give root password for maintenance

sda5 is my Linux partition and sda1 is Vista

As you might have noticed already, i'm not very knowledgable with repairing Linux problems, so any help is greatly appreciated!

Best regards,

Jason

What kind of software RAID were you using with CentOS?
Is this a dual boot Vista/Centos machine?
Linux md RAID 1 is not compatible with Vista software RAID.

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This has to be BIOS RAID setup. Is there any BIOS RAID option for resyncing on your motherboard?

My system is setup for dual boot Vista and CentOS v5.3.

The raid 1 came setup on my Dell system. I know it's not mdraid (thinking dmraid).

I will check the bios settings to see if I can sync it there.

There is a startup option to delete/create RAID arrays, but i'm afraid if I delete the RAID array and rebuild, I might lose data.

Perhaps my fears are irrational, and rebuilding the array from scratch is the best option?

Gerald, i'm sorry I forgot to mention, but I am using an isw : (+) Intel Software RAID.

#sudo dmraid -r
/dev/sdb: isw, "isw_biaeideiab", GROUP, ok, 1250263726 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/sda: isw, "isw_biaeideiab", GROUP, ok, 1250263726 sectors, data@ 0

Please excuse my ignorance, I am still learning many of the basics.

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Don't think that's an irrational fear. You want to recover/resynchronize the RAID, not delete and rebuild. Don't know exactly what options your system offers.

Decided to come back to this problem, sorry for the late reply. Here is some more info that may be useful:

thought i'd just spit out some info, and see if anyone can help me make anything out of it.

First off, grub:

#find /grub/stage1
(hd0,1)
(hd0,0)

#fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 40794 327675904 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 40795 40807 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 40808 41851 8385930 82 Linux swap /Solaris
/dev/sda4 41852 77825 288961155 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 41852 77825 288961123+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 40794 327675904 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 40795 40807 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 40808 41851 8385930 82 Linux swap /Solaris
/dev/sdb4 41852 77825 288961155 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 41852 77825 288961123+ 83 Linux

Secondly, my menu.lst file is located in /mnt/sysimage/boot/grub:

#boot=/dev/mapper/isw_biaeideiab_Volume0
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title CentOS (2.6.18-128.2.1.e15)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.2.1.e15 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-128.2.1.e15.img
title CentOS (2.6.18-128.2.1.e15)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.2.1.e15 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-128.2.1.e15.img
title CentOS (2.6.18-128.e15)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.e15 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-128.e15.img
title Vista 64bit
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

Are the menu.lst and grub.conf files supposed to be the same?

Also, I loaded the Knoppix live CD and could not run fstab on it. "Command not found". I am not currently working in rescue mode.

Regards,
Jason

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That's /dev/sda2 - presumably /boot.

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That is very odd - (hd0,0) should correspond to /dev/sda1 which is your Vista partition. I would have expected to see (hd1,1) - /dev/sdb2 - the mirror for /boot.
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That tells us that two separate devices are seen, so we are working with either software or "Fake RAID" - this plus dmraid info indicates the latter.

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In CentOS menu.lst is a symbolic link to grub.conf. The /dev/mapper stuff indicates that the installer was not seeing /dev/sd[ab].

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That's confusing. What mode are you working in? "fstab" is not a command - perhaps you meant "fsck"? Showing the contents of /etc/fstab would be useful.

Bottom line - I believe you installed as a Fake RAID system requiring a driver and that is now broken due to the operations you did to restore the RAID for Vista. The fact that two separate devices /dev/sda and /dev/sdb are seen shows that it is not a true hardware RAID or the system would see only a single device. If my conclusions are correct, if it were my system I'd do a non-RAID or software RAID re-install.

Thank you for your response.

I am currently working in linux rescue mode and I am working with Intel software RAID.

contents of /dev/mapper:

isw_biaeideiab_Volume0
isw_biaeideiab_Volume0p1
isw_biaeideiab_Volume0p2
isw_biaeideiab_Volume0p3
isw_biaeideiab_Volume0p4
isw_biaeideiab_Volume0p5

My fstab is located in /mnt/sysimage/etc and reads:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-isw_biaeid /swap swap defaults 0 0

Regards,
Jason

That's good information. Now you need somebody who actually uses dmraid to step in - not I.

Problem is finally solved. In fstab, the LABELs were picking up the images (i.e. /dev/sda5) instead of pointing to the actual drives (i.e. /dev/mapper/isw_biaeideiab_VolumeX).

Re-syncing RAID 1 with dmraid should now be simple.

Thanks for all of your input.

Jason