[KLUG Members] PANIC!!! Need Raid 5 array install help.

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>Yesterday by clicking on the wrong button I trashed my hardware Raid 5
>array, /dev/sdb, while I had my central file server down to fix a
>malfunctioning tape drive backup. (I have been having intermittent backup
>problems ever since my DDS2 tape drive died and I replaced it with a DDS3.
>After I fixed the tape drive, I put a hot spare in the Raid Array and pushed
>the wrong button to add the hot spare to the array.)

Ouch!

>I tried recreating the partition table with cfdisk. (In creating the
>partition from free space, I assumed since /dev/sdb is not a boot device the
>partition table does not have to marked bootable.) 
>I would like to try an /sbin/mke2fs -S as a last ditch effort to see if the
>inodes are still OK.

Good luck, seriously.  Make sure you partition table is IDENTICAL to the way it
was before.

>However, since this is a hardware Raid 5 array, I don't know if I have to
>include the -R stride="stripe size" option when I do this, or if this is
>only pertinent to software raid. I don't know if having this setting wrong
>will affect the functioning of the raid array.

stride only applies to software RAID.  Your controller is probably striding for you.

>If this doesn't work, I guess I will have to do a complete "mke2fs /dev/sdb,
>but once again, I don't know if I MUST include the -R stride="stripe size".

Nope, don't use stride.  You should be just fine without it.

>My Raid 5 array is backed up nightly to tape, but the tape drive failed
>completely on Monday night and I have been unable to down the server until
>this past weekend.

Yikes!  I've had nightmares like this...

>Consequently if I can't get to the data on the raid 5 array, I will have to
>do a restore from a week old tape that I hope is good.