CLOSED: Adding multiple HDDs to a new server

[jkbuckethead]

I am getting stuck adding and trying to edit etc/fstab. I'm using the "Adding drives to your HDA" work instruction.

The "backup" step step seems to have worked because when I repeat it tells me the files already exist. After that the "make a dummy fstab" step doesn't give the result I expect.

Here is what happens starting at the "make a dummy fstab":
I have the superuser (root) prompt ending with #.
I type in: cp /etc/fstab ~
I hit enter.
I type in: blkid >> ~/fstab
I hit enter. There is a brief pause and I am back to my prompt with the blinking cursor. There is no additional output.

At this point my instruction says "you should have something like this now..." and there is an expmple list of text describing etc/fstab. I don't see anything like this.

I proceeded anyway without seeing the output I expected:
I typed in: nano ~/fstab
I hit enter. I received the message "bash: nano: command not found"

Can't get past this point.
-K

I am having EXACTLY the same problem.

I started out following the Adding a second hard drive to your HDA instructions, but the Setup Disk Mount Order section seems to be based on Ubuntu, rather than Fedora, so I switched to the Adding drives to your HDA instructions that the original poster was following... with the same results. Clearly things aren't going to work when one of the instructions comes back as command not found.

In general I think my partitioning and formatting was completed correctly. I can run hda-diskmount, after which all partitions show in hda/setup/disks/partitions. However, once I reboot they are gone until I re-run hda-diskmount. Clearly a more permanent solution is required.

Unfortunately, bigfoot65's response (quoted below) wasn't very helpful. The original poster said that they weren't able to execute the /etc/fstab editing included in the instructions because nano didn't work. It's debatable if the blkid ~/fstab command worked since the expected output was not produced, but at least the OS recognized the command.

The best thing to do for the drives is to edit /etc/fstab and add the lines for each drive mounted.
A. Check /etc/fstab to ensure the drives are not listed that you are trying to add.
B. Reboot the server so the drives are unmounted.
C. Remount them one at a time, adding to /etc/fstab after each run of hda-diskmount.
D. Once you are done, you can then execute

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mount-a

and should not see any errors.

I would recommend you also remove all /var/hda/file/drives/drive1, etc before running the hda-diskmount the first time after reboot. As each drive is added, a new drive1, drive2, etc will be created. Those will be your mount points for each drive. Don't be alarmed if they show up as drive4, drive5. It does not matter as long as you put the correct entry in /etc/fstab.

The lines you add to /etc/fstab will look something like this:

UUID=9d972abc-1639-44df-a60e-668618d40236 /var/hda/files/drives/drive1 ext4 defaults 1 2

The wiki shows sdb1 which is not correct. I will have to fix that soon. Your /etc/fstab should have a line for each drive you are mounting. Think of this like a folder that points to the actual drive and it's contents.

How does one edit or check /etc/fstab when the editor given in the instructions, nano, isn't recognized by the OS?

Please provide an alternative method of editing /etc/fstab.

Thanks

[bigfoot65]

Try

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yum install nano

BTW you can use vi which is already installed. The wiki needs some updates and I will try to work those.

EDIT: I am going to work on a simpler tutorial for adding drives. It is not that difficult, but the guidance makes it look a bit daunting. We do have a disk wizard which will make this all very simple once development is complete. It's not quite ready for production use.

[jkbuckethead]

Okay, loaded nano, and got the fstab edited. Before editing the fstab included three UUID lines up top corresponding to the OS drive that I used for the initial install. At the bottom where the 5 storage drives I was trying to add, each preceded by /dev/sdx. I removed the /dev/sdx from each line so they looked like the lines above, saved it and moved it.

At this point I was following the "Adding drives to your HDA" instructions. The last part of the instructions, Make the empty folders is just baffling. There is no explanation of what the folders are for, or what the drive1 means. The instructions reference making folders if we need multiple; at this point a novice doing an initial install has no idea what is needed. I am trying to add five storage drives so do I have to do this three times? Is drive1 the drive that is already installed? If I were doing this five times, do I number them 1-5 or 2-6?

Anyway, I typed in the command just as it was written in the instructions. Since this was the end of the instructions, I rebooted the system and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, after rebooting, the new drives do show up in setup\disks\devices, but they do not show up under partitions or stats. They did show up in partitions and stats before, after running hda-diskmount before rebooting or editing /etc/fstab. So, even though I was able to edit fstab as instructed, I appear to be no closer to using the drives. Please advise...

[bigfoot65]

Agreed the guidance is not very clear.

I personally prefer users follow the adding a second hard drive to your HDA guidance as it requires less steps.

To explain the point of the folders, here it goes. They are mount points for the drive partitions. So think of drive 1 as the mount point or folder that holds all the files that are on a single drive partition. So if you have 5 drives, you will have 5 folders labeled drive1 - drive 5.

Adding drives to Linux is a bit more complicated than Windows, especially without a Desktop GUI application. We will have to work on this guidance to make it a bit simpler. Most users just need something that works, not all the explanation of how things are being done.

[bigfoot65]

I have put together a different wiki page for adding hard drives to Amahi, titled Adding Hard Drives 101.

Please check it out and let me know if it's simpler and detailed enough. I would like to make this page something geared more towards the inexperienced Linux users so feedback is welcome.