[rescue] Vorpal Dustbunnies from Heck!

[Phil Stracchino]

At least part of my array problem has been isolated and cured .... Since
I wanted to pull the basically-DOA replacement disk out of my original
711 anyway, I went ahead and powered everything down and took the case
apart to vacuum it, having noticed that there was a strong and easily
hand-perceptible draft of cool air flowing into the new 711 I just got
from Harold, but no perceptible flow into mine.

There wasn't much visible sign of dust accumulation from the outside,
but in the inside ventilation passages between the disk bay and the
power supply ....  Holy vorpal dust bunnies, Batman!  There must have
been virtually no airflow at all between the two.  No wonder disks were
running hot in that chassis.  (I'd actually meant to do that some time
ago, and intended again to do it before I brought everything back up
here, then intended AGAIN to do it before I loaded up all the new disks,
but the presence of three small children -- two of whom seem to be
continually screaming hatred and rage at each other -- frazzles my
brain.  Working from home with these kids in the house would be out of
the question...  it'd be impossible.)


It's all cleaned out now, and re-initializing RAID5 on ten disks.  I
figure on running it for a while with a two-disk hot spare pool and see
how it goes.  If that goes well, I may add an extra disk into it and cut
the hot spare pool down to one.


-- 
 Phil Stracchino       phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
    Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker
 Mobile: 603-216-7037         Landline: 603-886-3518