History of SAS Controller & Drives Summary

<h2>Hardware</h2>
- <strong>Controller</strong>: Adaptec ASR-5405Z 512MB (aacraid driver)
- <strong>Server</strong>: srv9 — AMD FX-6300, M5A78L-M USB3, 32GB RAM
- <strong>SAS Drives</strong>:
- Seagate Exos ST8000NM0075 8TB (LENOVO-X branded) — /media3
- Second identical drive arrived later — /media4
- <strong>SATA Drives</strong>: Also connected via controller

<h2>The Problem</h2>
- Controller visible in dmesg/sg_map but no block device created
- `/dev/sg2` showed `PQual=1` "LU temporarily unavailable"
- All tools hanging — arcconf, sg commands etc
- Controller was trying to build arrays, corrupted SATA partition tables!

<h2>The Solution</h2>
<strong>arcconf</strong> (Adaptec management CLI) — version maze:
- V4 — hangs waiting for controller to be ready
- V3 — "Controllers found: 0"
- Working middle version found on Microchip site

<strong>Key commands:</strong>
{code}# Check physical devices
arcconf getconfig 1 PD

# Create JBOD (critical step!)
arcconf create 1 jbod 0 0 noprompt
# Where 0 0 is channel/device from PD output

# Verify block device appeared
lsblk
dmesg | tail -20
{code}

<h2>Why JBOD Was Needed</h2>
- ASR-5405Z is hardware RAID controller — no passthrough mode
- Must explicitly create JBOD before OS sees disk as block device
- Without JBOD: controller holds disk in "temporarily unavailable" state
- JBOD config lives in controller flash, not on disk

<h2>Filesystem Choice</h2>
- <strong>XFS</strong> chosen over ext4 for media storage
- Reasons: large files (TV recordings), no reserved blocks (saves ~400GB on 8TB), better performance when nearly full
- Both drives formatted XFS, mounted /media3 and /media4

<h2>Second Drive</h2>
- Same process but smoother — crib sheet worked!
- Controller showed drive as Ready immediately
- JBOD created, partitioned, formatted, mounted

<h2>Key Gotchas</h2>
- Controller needs time to initialise — wait for "Ready" in arcconf before creating JBOD
- arcconf JBOD config survives reboots but not moving to different controller
- Moving drive to new machine needs JBOD recreated
- SATA drives also need JBOD if connected via this controller!

<h2>Cribsheet</h2>
https://myhomecloud.uk/wiki/ASR-5405Z+Configuration+Notes

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<h1>{code} in Bitweaver — Fixed! 🎉</h1>

<h2>The Problem</h2>
- `code` smarty blocks not rendering in wiki/blog pages
- CKEditor mangling smarty tags
- Had been broken for some time

<h2>Claude Code Fixed It</h2>
- Used Claude Code to diagnose and fix
- Now working properly
- Cribsheets can now use proper code blocks!

<h2>Impact</h2>
- Wiki pages with code examples now display correctly
- Makes technical documentation much more useful
- All the cribsheets from this conversation can be updated! 😄

<h2>Remaining Cribsheet Updates Needed</h2>
- ASR-5405Z page
- PHP84 Protection
- Fail2ban setup
- Git workflow
- Webstack setup
- All can now use `code` blocks properly!