[WBEL-users] Resizing RAID devices

[Alon]

Well.. you managed to scare me a bit :))

I use partition magic very often setting micr$oft systems, but I had some 
problems with ext3. It didn't really support it.
So even $$ can't bail you out sometime and it is the little penguin tools 
that are more suitable for ext3 etc.

I finally got the hang of a RAID1 configuration - as simple as it might 
sound, for a novice as I am, configuring it correctly
was a painful experience (heck. .now it takes me less than 2 minutes to set 
it up).

Since earlier (few weeks ago) I did hear about the LVM option, on the next 
system, I'll want to explore that concept more
closely.
I don't get new systems so often, so the next time I'll get a new system, 
I'll have my couple of days to play with the LVM features.

The annoying thing is:  I wanted to create a mirror site for the White Box 
site, but now,.. after running the rsync for about...8 hours
and still going.. and with 3.6GB d/l already.. I'll have to pull the plug on 
this as this is just not feasable with the resources that I have
on the current server.

In the next system, I'll work it such that it will be available.

I appreciate the help and the information about the "DON'T TOUCH THAT RAID 
IF YOU ARE RUNNING ON PRODUCTION" warning.

- Alon
js at wsco.com
>
>    I believe it's possible, but I wouldn't do it.  I know it is
> possible to resize partitions (even RAID partitions if you are
> willing to use beta tools).  Just so you know, your much better off
> just using LVM next time.  I use it on my desktop machine, and have
> had it running on several production servers for nearly a year on
> WBEL3.0.
>
>    Now, in terms of just straight up resizing, it's no big deal.
> First you resize the filesystem to be smaller, using resize2fs.
> Then you have to dig up RAID resizing tools.
>
> This section of the RAID HOWTO:
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.1
>
> refers to this site:
> http://unthought.net/raidreconf/
>
>    Then you resize your RAID partitions.  Now your free space might
> be fragmented (I can't tell, I don't have enough information).  I'm
> not sure what tools you can use to overcome such a problem.  gparted
> might deal with it, I'm not sure.  This might be a technical feat to
> overcome.  If it is merely a shifting problem, you are fine.  If it
> is a re-ordering problem, you've got issues.  I'm not sure what tool
> set that is freely available that would do it.  I'm reasonably sure
> Partition Magic would deal with it, but I haven't run that in
> probably 5-6 years.  It's also a for money tool.
>
>    Okay, so now I've strung you along, making you believe it might
> be possible.  However, I wouldn't do it.  I'd just back everything
> up, start over and use LVM, and restore.  Depending on your usage,
> LVM snapshots would let you have backups of yesterday and today
> while using considerably less disk storage (never used snapshots in
> production, for whatever that is worth).
>
>    There's no way I'd do this without a backup, so I'd just plan on
> having to do the restore, use LVM as it is the proper technical
> solution to this problem.  Buying two new SATA drives and just doing
> the migration would be much, much easier and time efficient.
> Depending on the value of your time, it's a net win.
>
>    Thanks,
>        Kirby
>
>> I don't mind rebooting from a setup disk if needed, I just never
>> resized using a diskdruid or alike.  If this is possible, I need
>> to resize both HDs' partitions to match. (both HDs are of 80GB
>> SATA).  the question is, do I do that as RAID devices or do I need
>> to remove the RAID configuration and then do a resize on each one
>> of them?
>>
>>
>> - Alon
>> js at wsco.com
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