CentOS - Jul 2008 - Duplicate PV on HW RAID?

Hello,
My "hardware" (?) RAID system seems to work but says "duplicate
PV" while
booting, I don't think I was reading them before. Any clues will be
appreciated.
>From what I recall:
1) RAID 1 was setup (using firmware setup program) on a machine with Intel
S3200 SHV Server Board.
2) Installed Centos 5.1, default LVM style. Anaconda saw a single 500GB disk
so I assumed this was a true hardware RAID system. Am I wrong here?
3) Then wanted to reduce LogVol00 so as to make room for a new, data only
filesystem on its own LV. Started by booting with rescue CD, lvscanned the
disk, lvchanged -a y. Intended to resize root filesystem with resize2fs. Was
asked to fsck, which I did (by the way, getting many errors). Fixed them all
(fingers crossed), fsck again said ok. Then resize2fs worked happily.
4) Rebooted the installed system. Now "Duplicate PV" shows at boot.
Honestly
I don't know whether this was being displayed before (this is an inherited
server). This message shows at the screen but no record of it is kept on any
log file.
5) Everything seems to work well anyway. I created a new LV as I wished,
just this message keeps me thinking...

Should I care? Should I fix it? Is it a true RAID board? Should I be better
off going software-RAID 1?

lspci says
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Server DRAM Controller
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI
Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port
1 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port
5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI
Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IR (ICH9R) LPC Interface
Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA RAID Controller
(rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev
02)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200e [Pilot]
ServerEngines (SEP1) (rev 02)
03:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82541PI Gigabit Ethernet
Controller (rev 05)
03:02.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82541GI Gigabit Ethernet
Controller (rev 05)


Thank you in advance

-- 
Eduardo Grosclaude
Universidad Nacional del Comahue
Neuquen, Argentina
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Eduardo Grosclaude wrote:
> 
> Hello, 
> My "hardware" (?) RAID system seems to work but says 
> "duplicate PV" while booting, I don't think I was reading 
> them before. Any clues will be appreciated. 
> From what I recall:
> 1) RAID 1 was setup (using firmware setup program) on a 
> machine with Intel S3200 SHV Server Board. 
> 2) Installed Centos 5.1, default LVM style. Anaconda saw a 
> single 500GB disk so I assumed this was a true hardware RAID 
> system. Am I wrong here? 
> 3) Then wanted to reduce LogVol00 so as to make room for a 
> new, data only filesystem on its own LV. Started by booting 
> with rescue CD, lvscanned the disk, lvchanged -a y. Intended 
> to resize root filesystem with resize2fs. Was asked to fsck, 
> which I did (by the way, getting many errors). Fixed them all 
> (fingers crossed), fsck again said ok. Then resize2fs worked happily. 
> 4) Rebooted the installed system. Now "Duplicate PV" shows at 
> boot. Honestly I don't know whether this was being displayed 
> before (this is an inherited server). This message shows at 
> the screen but no record of it is kept on any log file.
> 5) Everything seems to work well anyway. I created a new LV 
> as I wished, just this message keeps me thinking...
> 
> Should I care? Should I fix it? Is it a true RAID board? 
> Should I be better off going software-RAID 1?
> 
> lspci says 
More informative output would be:

# sfdisk -d
# pvs
# vgs

There might be a disk from an old RAID1 set in there.

-Ross

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Eduardo Grosclaude wrote:
> 4) Rebooted the installed system. Now "Duplicate PV" shows at
boot. Honestly
To me it sounds likely that the raid controller is shitty and
is presenting two sets of devices to the OS, one likely being
the "RAID" device and the other a more generic device(s).

What does 'dmesg' say? Do you see more devices than you think
you should have on the system?

As long as LVM is using the "right" one, I think there shouldn't
be a problem. As another poster mentioned show your LVM configuration,
you may want to add a filter into /etc/lvm/lvm.conf to make sure it
uses the right one.

I've only seen this condition myself when:

1) Using multipathing software and multiple links to the same storage
   (in which case I adjust lvm.conf to account for this)
2) snapshot a volume on an array and export it to the same host that
   had the master(in which case I decided that wasn't the best way to
   accomplish what I wanted).

nate