[solved, but confused] Unable to mount Perc5/i Volume

Xaero252 · 2012-10-30 11:47:08

I have a Dell Perc 5/i raid card in my fileserver, configured in Raid 5 with a Hot spare (8x2tb WD Caviar Blacks) The card worked fine under windows, and under Ubuntu (which were both just compatibility and stability tests before deploying the fileserver). Now that I am running under Archlinux, I am completely unable to mount the volume. It is formatted Ext3 and I am able to see the device using #fdisk -l which shows the volume there and available. Attempting to mount to any mountpoint however results in the following:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/array
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist

Output of fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sdb: 11999.1 GB, 11999064883200 bytes, 23435673600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical) 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
      Device Boot               Start                    End                Blocks        Id    System
/dev/sdb1                             1        4294967295       2147483647       ee    GPT

The only thing that even seems slightly off to me is the Disk Identifier. It just seems odd that fdisk can see the drive, but mount apparently cannot.
What makes it even more frusterating is that the kernel sees the device and executes fsck on it on boot via systemd.
I'm pretty lost as I've never seen this type of issue before.

Okay, so I fixed the issue. blkid reports the partition is actually /dev/sdb3. There is no /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdb2 though. Is there any way to correct the partition table so that it becomes /dev/sdb1? Its a minor nuissance, but it just seems illogical for the FIRST ( and only) partition on this drive to be /dev/sdb3.

Last edited by Xaero252 (2012-10-30 12:20:11)

alphaniner · 2012-10-30 13:38:46

According to the output of fdisk, the 'drive' is partitioned with GPT. You should have gotten an error along with the fdisk output:

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.

The error stupidly appears before the device listing, so it's easy to miss unless you only fdisk -l the one device.

Anyway, ignore the suggestion to use parted, and use gdisk to work with the disk. From there you can possibly remake the partition along the same boundaries if you're feeling adventurous.

PS: The unusual disk identifier you noticed is also a 'symptom' of GPT partitioning.

Last edited by alphaniner (2012-10-30 13:45:21)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-10-30 11:47:08

[solved, but confused] Unable to mount Perc5/i Volume

#2 2012-10-30 13:38:46

Re: [solved, but confused] Unable to mount Perc5/i Volume

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