[TriLUG] 4TB GPT Disk fails to Mount with Tomato 2.6.22.19 Kernel

[Ron Kelley]

Sorry if I missed it earlier, but do you have to stick with Tomato as the OS?  Since you bought a new box specifically for RAID, can't you simply install CentOS to get the capability you need?



Thanks,

-----------------------------
Ron Kelley
rkelleyrtp at gmail.com



On Aug 14, 2012, at 11:06 AM, Alan Sterger wrote:

> Thomas et al,
> 
> Thank you for the reply.  Yes I've been working this issue for a while now.
> 
> To reply to an earlier idea, Tomato uses stripped down embedded linux relying heavily on BusyBox.  Unfortunately, that means no LVM support.
> 
> I paid ~$400 for this box specifically for the RAID capability.  I initially had it configured RAID-1 for security and formatted NTFS.  This worked with the Linksys E3000 factory firmware which only supports FAT32 and NTFS.  I then purchased Acronis True Image for backup.  Acronis produces a single large compressed image of the drive.  My ~160GB backup took 13+ hours to write out with no verification.  I needed a faster alternative.  Thought RAID-0 would provide better performance as well as going to a non-journaling filesystem.
> 
> Yesterday, reinitialized the drive to individual (2LUN) drives and formatted both as ext2.  As expected this worked.
> 
> From the 4 available configuration modes: RAID-0, RAID-1, SPAN, 2LUN only the half capacity (2TB/MBR) RAID-1 and 2LUN modes mount in Tomato.  The 4TB/GPT modes RAID-0 and SPAN do not.  4TB/GPT works well in Windows Vista.
> 
> I was hoping someone here might be into rolling their own kernel or third-party router firmware and could point me or hack this problem for me (compensated of course).  If not, I'll just have to use lower capacity RAID-1 or individual disks until linux catches up to Windows.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Alan Sterger
> 
> 
> On 8/13/2012 3:08 PM, Thomas Gardner wrote:
>> OK, I started doing some Googling, and saw some other places where
>> you've asked for help with this.  Obviously it's a real thorn for you.
>> 
>> I've only just started looking around, but two thoughts occur to me
>> about how to jury-rig something together that will do what you want.
>> I kind of mentioned the first one earlier, and that is:  Isn't there
>> a mode on this thing that will present two separate drives to your
>> Tomato device?  I would have thought that's what the JBOD mode would
>> have been, but apparently not....
>> 
>> Second, if the above doesn't work, I noticed while I was reading some
>> other responses, there seemed to be some question as to whether or
>> not the SATA-USB bridge used on this thing is really all that well
>> supported in any Linux, particularly in the kernel used in Tomato.
>> Have you considered just buying a pair of cheap ones that are known
>> to be supported by Linux and replace whatever is in your magic box
>> with a couple of those?  They're easy enough to find:  Just scan
>> the reviews at a place like NewEgg ur sumsuch for Linux and buy two
>> of the cheapest one (or the one with the most favorable reviews or
>> whatever else you generally go by) you can find where someone else
>> reports it worked for them on their Linux box.  Plug each one into
>> each of your drives, plug both of them into your little Tomato box,
>> and now, hopefully you'll see two devices (sda and sdb).  It might
>> look like frankenbox with wires sticking out and running all over,
>> but if it works, you can almost always find ways to hide the ugly
>> (or at least minimize it).
>> 
>> The point for both of these dirty hacks would be:  If you can see
>> the two disks separately, you should then be able to use LVM to
>> concatenate them to get what you want (check to make sure Tomato
>> actually supports LVM before doing any of the above, of course).
>> 
>> Even if you can't get Tomato to concatenate two separate drives, maybe
>> you can figure out a way to just go ahead and mount them separately and
>> spread your data out (more or less) evenly between the two mountpoints.
>> 
>> BTW, I've got some SATA-USB converters that I know are supported in
>> Linux which I can loan to you to see if plan B will actually work
>> before you go out and order any new equipment.  The things are cheap,
>> but even when cheap, it's a waste to buy something that doesn't help
>> your problem.
>> 
>> L8r,
>> tg.
>> 
>> On 8/13/12, Alan Sterger<asterger at earthlink.net>  wrote:
>>> Thanks for the reply Jack and Thomas.  Didn't want to post dmesg unless
>>> there was any interest.
>>> 
>>> RAID box is configured as JBOD at present.  This mode concatenates the
>>> 2-2TB drives into one 4TB span.  Its not working either, virtually the
>>> same errors and dmesg as the RAID-0 configuration.
>>> 
>>> Tomato sees the block device /dev/sda but not the /dev/sda1 partition.
>>> It does work fine configured as RAID-1 (2TB) but I loose half capacity.
>>> 
>>> dmesg can be found at http://pastebin.com/yAq2McpU (if I set up the
>>> account correctly).
>>> 
>>> Any help will be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> -- Alan Sterger
> -- 
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