topic Re: adding disks in Operating System - Linux

adding disks

Tarek_1 — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 13:29:56 GMT

Hi there,
i have a Dell PowerEdge 2400 with scsi disks. After redhat 7.2 installation i have added further disks and now i want to format,partition them and create filesystems.
How can i do that and how can i see those disks?
I tried with format command (as on Solaris) but here it doesn't exist. I also tried with fdisk but i don't see my disks, i just have to specify a device but if i don't know what it is yet how can i do?
Thanks in advance
Tarek

Re: adding disks

Sachin Patel — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 13:32:45 GMT

Hi Tarek,
SCSI disk device name is
/dev/hda
/dev/hdb
/dev/hdc and so on.

Try
#fdisk /dev/hda1 or /dev/hda2 etc...

Or run cfdisk.

Sachin

Re: adding disks

Tarek_1 — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 13:40:56 GMT

Sachin,
scsi disks are
/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
....
however i will try as you said.
(cfdisk on redhat doesn't exist, i used it on other linux systems)
Thanks
Tarek

Re: adding disks

Sachin Patel — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 14:36:05 GMT

opps my mistake. you are right. so you can't see sda ..??

what happens when you boot the system. scsi bois should recognize the disk before even linux load.

Sachin

Re: adding disks

Tarek_1 — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:13:41 GMT

I thinks at boot it isn't able to see the new disks, but i'm not sure.
What log should i have to check?
In the /var/log/messages i'm not seeing the new disks, only the 3 old ones (sda,sdb,sdc).
I'm not the one that has added the disks, how can i check in the bios?
Thanks
Tarek

Re: adding disks

Sachin Patel — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:19:07 GMT

When your system is booting up you will have to read a message to go in to the scsi bios setup it might be ctr-a or something. then you can mess aoround there. there is no log for this one.
There is a utility called kudzu run that it might help.

/usr/sbin/kudzu

Sachin

Re: adding disks

I_M — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 01:36:53 GMT

Hi

If your disk is IDE, you will find

hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL1280A ATA Drive
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6>

This is my 1.2GB system disk.
2nd line shows you this HD have 1 primary partition and 2 logical partition in extended partition.

If your kernel find disk, the kernel assign "hda","hdb","hdc" and "hdd" for IDE, "sda","sdb","sdc","sdd" and so on.
So you may want to grep those keywords.
# dmesg | grep hd
# dmesg | grep sd

or

# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
also tells you what devices are connected and deteced by kernel.

Good luck

Re: adding disks

Tarek_1 — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 06:02:42 GMT

I did cat /proc/scsi/scsi and also dmesg | grep sd and i found only my "old" three disks, so i think that the disks weren't installed correctly. Just to be sure about that, when disks are added, do i have to recompile the kernel? Actually i'm using the default one.
Tarek

Re: adding disks

I_M — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 07:03:39 GMT

Hello again,

There are 3 levels.

1) SCSI card recognize your HDs.
See scsi card initialization at boot time (before loading kernel.)

If scsi address duplicate, the termination is not correct or mixed devices such as SE & LVD... these mis-configuration cause your device not detect at this level.

2) Check if the scsi card which connect the disks on dmesg.
If you connect new disks on the same scsi card, it should be OK.

3) Check if the kernel detect the devices.... we know this was failed.

Good luck.