After a power cut which lasted so long the UPS shut down. When power was eventually restored my workstation failed to re-start. The symptom was that the normal pre-boot was faster than usual but then gives me boot options from the bios system, none of which work.
I was able to boot to USB openSUSE rescue system and it was clear that a drive was missing. The drive in question is actually a RAID array and I believe the RAID controller card has failed. My system runs on an nvme drive but the booting has to be from a disk hard drive so a small partition was enabled on the drive array for the EFI booting.
The machine is an IBM X3400 M3 7379 W03 with serveRAID M5014 card (FRU 46C8929 with BBU) and it looks like the BBU has died. I shall remove the battery and see if the card recovers. Second hand cards are available as are new batteries. This post is probably OT but does anybody have experience of replacing a card in this situation and can they advise? PP me is appropriate.
I am working from memory but my drive configuration comprised a large RAID array and a 2GB NVME PCI card drive which held my OS. As I recall the workstation, an ancient IBM server, could not boot from the PCI drive but do not recall how I overcame this problem.
Hi Malcolm,
I did this first but for reasons I do not recall, at some time later I believe I created a small partition on the array.
With hindsight clearly not a good idea but since the RAID has died, having my system running is not essential. In short term I can work on spare machine as files I need for next couple of weeks are all in the cloud.
My backup situation is not as good as it should be but I have ordered a replacement card. (Second hand from Germany) and this should pick up the configuration from the drives if I start it with a cleared NVRAM. We shall see. I tried the existing card with battery removed but it did not recover.
Meanwhile I am trying to find a thread with a link I was sent which gave much better instructions on setting up autofs than those in the openSUSE docs, before I edit anything. Until I do this system is pausing while it waits for two connections to the dead server. Time flies when having fun.
Hi and many thanks for this. If the replacement card fails then I shall have to dedicate time for these options. Unfortunately my notes and configuration are temporarily lost so this will be quite an issue. Your reply is much appreciated and I shall tell you how I get on when card arrives, which will be a while given the long Holiday.
Thanks again,
Alastair.
Just to confirm that the replacement ServeRAID card arrived and was installed last night. It must have been set to factory defaults as it picked up my RAID configuration (7+1 disks, Raid 5 array with 1 hot spare) immediately and I was able to boot as normal.
Budge