Woke up this morning, and my fileserver had emailed me this:
md0 : active raid5 sdh1[6](F) sdd1[5] sdc1[4] sdf1[3] sdg1[2] sdi1[7](F)
2441919680 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/4] [__UUUU]
Looks like I get a trial-by-fire of MD RAID recovery tonight, once I figure out what broke.
Today, not long after getting home, the power blinked – just long enough to shut down the TV and a couple of computers, including the media center (which has a crappy power supply so that’s no surprise) and my desktop (which was a surprise). Every desktop system I have aside from the HTPC uses relatively high-end power supplies, which I’ve noticed have the side benefit of keeping the system on a bit longer in the event of a short gap in AC power.
After quite a few futile attempts to get my desktop to boot again, I’ve concluded it has now developed a nasty hardware failure somewhere. The random nature (it hangs anywhere from before POST completes to after logging into Windows) makes me suspect the motherboard, but I suppose the power supply could be at fault as well.
It’s really a pain because I really don’t have much time to sit down and diagnose why it’s broken, but at the same time I don’t have a ton of money laying around to throw at problems. I’m actually somewhat tempted to just let the damn thing sit until I can afford to do the upgrade I was planning on – a Nehalem-based quad-core Intel setup.