What's wrong with my fstab?

[yldouright]

fjgaude
Thanks for your attention but I don't understand your question. I thought entering the device in the fstab WAS how you create the mount point. Where else do I need to make an entry? What should be in mdadm.conf and mtab?

[fjgaude]

No, it takes more than that. The entry in the fstab file means that it will be mounted at the mountpoint, but if there is no such point then it is ignored.

To make a mountpoint you simply have to make a directory like so:

sudo mkdir /Hold

and the other:

sudo mkdir /Data

After that you can manually mount but if you reboot the arrays should automatically mount and you are good to go.

Let us know how it goes.

[yldouright]

fjgaude
I ran the two commands and the only result was two folders on my root directory. Disk Usage Analyzer confirms that no new media was mounted. Rebooting changes nothing. Do I need entries in the mdadm.conf or mtab?

[fjgaude]

Okay, can you run this command:

sudo mount -a

If you don't see the two arrays come up then something is still not right.

Show this:

df -h

Have you tried to manually mount the arrays?

[yldouright]

fjgaude
The command sudo mount -a tells me that /Data and /Hold do not exist and
df -h confirms that only the /(root) partition is mounted. I tried manually mounting the partitions as per your previous directions with no luck.

[yldouright]

fjgaude and all others who have contributed here:
After I rebooted with the /Hold and /Data directories /dev/md1 did mount at /Data. Disk Usage Analyzer now shows the additional capacity. I stopped /dev/md0 in anticipation of my next step. Step one is complete, now the challenging part: Moving my root to the /dev/md0 partition. Does this warrant a new thread?

[fjgaude]

I think it would be a good idea to start a new thread...

[samosamo]

Forgive me but if you couldn't figure out fstab without a 2 page thread, you have miles to go before you can attempt to move your root partition to a raid device. keep reading.

[Krupski]

Krupski
Thanks for the explanation on <dump> and <pass>. I have modded my fstab again and pasted it below:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system>					<mount point>	<type>	<options>			<dump>	<pass>
proc						/proc		proc	defaults			0	0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=ebe544be-f872-40e2-a6c9-08308ff289a9	/		ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro	0	1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=6669472b-2c0b-4066-a9da-1a6f77da3f58 	none		swap    sw				0	0
# /dev/sdb6
UUID=8b35ef5a-40be-407a-b602-7aca66e81fcb 	none		swap    sw				0	0
/dev/scd0					/media/cdrom0   	udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec	0       0
/dev/fd0					/media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto,exec		0       0
/dev/md0					/Hold		auto	defaults			0	2
# UUID=466fa0a4:f6e34a24:157ad407:f60bdcfa 	
/dev/md1					/Data		auto	defaults			0	2
# UUID=f04435c5:38a9a54d:157ad407:f60bdcfa

My mdadm.conf remains empty. I did not change the last field <pass> in the header. That was the way it came with my 7.10 Ubuntu install. The changes I made should only be cosmetic. I replaced spaces with tabs in order to align the table better. /procstat says the array is active and running but when I try to mount, I get an error stating the mount point can't be found.

MDADM.CONF should not be empty. If it's missing somehow (and you do have MDADM installed) you can recreate it like this:

First, cut-n-paste the following into "/etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf":

# mdadm.conf
#
# Please refer to mdadm.conf(5) for information about this file.
#

# by default, scan all partitions (/proc/partitions) for MD superblocks.
# alternatively, specify devices to scan, using wildcards if desired.
DEVICE partitions

# auto-create devices with Debian standard permissions
CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes

# automatically tag new arrays as belonging to the local system
HOMEHOST <system>

# instruct the monitoring daemon where to send mail alerts
MAILADDR root

# definitions of existing MD arrays

Then ADD the array definition to the file like this:

sudo mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

NOTE in red the DOUBLE "greater-than" redirection sign.

The first operation will create the bulk of the mdadm.conf file, the last operation will ADD the array definition(s) of your MDADM RAID arrays.

After you reboot, your RAID arrays should be available (assuming you are mounting them with fstab).

Good luck

-- Roger

[Krupski]

fjgaude
Thanks for your attention but I don't understand your question. I thought entering the device in the fstab WAS how you create the mount point. Where else do I need to make an entry? What should be in mdadm.conf and mtab?

OK look you need to understand the basic IDEA of what's going on.

Linux has "devices" such as "/dev/sda" and other various names. These devices can accept data or provide data.

For example, a hard drive might be named "/dev/sda" and you can both write to it and read from it.

Directory names in Linux are just that... directories. And, the cool thing is that you can "connect" a directory to a hard drive and access the hard drive by just reading and writing the directory.

The "connecting" process is called "mounting".

So, let's say you install a new bare hard drive and it's called "/dev/sda".

Let's say you want to partition the drive 1/2 and 1/2, so you use fdisk or cfdisk to do it.

Each partition needs a name (a way to reference it), so they are called "/dev/sda ONE" and /dev/sda TWO" (actually "/dev/sda1" and /dev/sda2").

Now, let's say you want to access those partitions. Make a directory for each of them... the name is up to you.

Let's say you make a directory called "/first-part" in the root directory and "/second-part" in the root directory.

At this point, both those directories are just empty, worthless directories. So now let's CONNECT THEM to the hard drive:

mount /dev/sda1 /first-part
mount /dev/sda2 /second-part

NOW when you look at those directories, you will see the contents of the hard drive. If you store files in the directories, you are actually storing them on /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2 (depending on which directory you access).

Now, reboot. DARN the connections are gone. You have to type "mount" again. Bummer.

Or... better to AUTO mount them, put the desired "connections" into fstab, like this:

/dev/sda1   /first-part     auto  defaults  0  2
/dev/sda2   /second-part    auto  defaults  0  2

What this means? In order, the entries mean:

(1) The device (drive) name, (2) Where you want to connect them to, (3) Let Linux automatically figure out if the drives are EXT3 or NTFS or whatever, (4) Setup default read, write and execute attributes, (5) Don't "dump" the drive contents if there's a crash and (6) Run FSCK (File System Check) on these drives at bootup to be sure they're not corrupted.


Got it now?

-- Roger