Hello sir, i know that cockpit has the option to shrink and grow partitions , but i have a server with 3 disks used as a raid, can i do it for this one too ?
Interesting question. First RAID is the underlying disk(s) structure. Your file system sits on top of your RAID array. Depending the program used for setup and how the RAID array was setup, the only way to change the actual raid array would be by adding more disks, making it bigger. You still have to install partitions and file systems on top of the RAID array to make it useful. And for the most part these will act as one would expect in a non raid setup. Making changes may take a longer time period, as RAID has added an extra layer. I will caution that adjusting partition sizes, even on non raid, does carry some risk, so backup first. Increasing the size is safer than shrinking a partition. So take the proper care, and make sure you have the time available.
I do have one question. I tried to create the partition and mount it but I get this message: "Message recipient disconnected from message bus without replying". My research seems to suggest that there's nothing much I can do about that in cockpit. Is there a way to partition and mount my RAID device manually in terminal? Thanks!
I have heard of this issue before, but mainly from Arch Linux. RAID arrays can be manually configured form the terminal with the *mdadm* command. It is not overly complicated, but requires several steps to create the array. The man page is fairly comprehensive, and there are a couple of good tutorials on line. I was thinking about writing one, as i have had several requests for how to do it manually. Are you using Debian? If so, you can enable back-ports, and upgrade to a much newer version of cockpit-storage. For example Bookworm uses 287-1, while bookworm back-port uses 309-1 (same version that is in trixie (testing), but compiled for bookworm. The same applies to all of the cockpit packages. Can I ask if your RAID array works, in spite of the error message or is it hard down?
@@retiredtechie Thanks for the reply! I this this issue was a flub on my part. I am using Debian. So I have two hard drives, one is an old one that already had a partition and the other new one of the same model. I was aiming to make a RAID1 setup. I tried setting up RAID using that partition and the unpartitioned drive. That may have had something to do with it. Here's how I got around the issue: I deleted the messed up RAID setup and the old partition. I set up new partition tables for both drives and remade the RAID setup (although I used GPT partitioning since my drives are bigger than 2TB). After that finished syncing (it took 10 hours since I was using 8TB drives), I got an error in the storage tab logs saying "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/usdisks2/modules" was non-existent. I made sure that udisks2 was installed then just made the directory. After that I was able to successfully create a partition for the RAID setup and mount it!
Great News! Glad to hear it is working for you. The time factor for creating a RAID Array is one of the things that does not come though a lot of tutorials, although I would have thought a RAID 1mirror would be faster than say a RAID 5 stripped with distributed parity, But that seems to not be the case. Anyway, glad you got it working.
