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Ole Tange
Asked: 2013-06-26 00:30:46 +0800 CST

GNU/Linux: SAS-disk detected as /dev/sg7 - not as /dev/sdb

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I have just installed a SAS disk into a Debian server. It was detected correctly and everything was fine.

Then I moved the SAS disk to a different Debian server, the same hardware model and running same version of Debian, but here the SAS disk is detected as /dev/sg7 and not /dev/sdb.

smartctl -a /dev/sg7 works fine, but fdisk and cat hang.

I tried putting the SAS disk in another slot: Same problem.

How can I force the SAS disk to be detected as /dev/sdb?

# uname -a
Linux maxwell 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.41-2+deb7u2 x86_64 GNU/Linux

dmesg says:

[171458.833581] scsi 0:1:5:0: Direct-Access     SEAGATE  ST91000640SS     0004 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[171458.833795] scsi 0:1:5:0: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 0
linux

1 Answers

  1. The two servers are the same model. They have the same modules loaded, but they are not using the same modules.

    lspci shows that the two servers of the same model use very different RAID controllers (I hate it when vendors do that: F*cking change the model number if it is not the same model!).

    On the server, where the disk works, you do not need to setup anything to access a disk that is not in a RAID. But on the server, where the disk does not work, you need to set the disk up as a volume in the RAID controller before Linux detects it.

    So I have now done that, and the disk is now accessible.

    Thanks to Falcon Momot and Sergey Vlasov for pointing me in the right direction.

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