Software Raid on linux 2.2.14/5 with version 0.90.0 of raidtools

[Maria Blackmore]

Hi,

In a nutshell, it simply doesn't work, there isn't much more I can say
than that, because that is just it.

The installed distribution is SuSE 6.4, and I am using the installed
raidtools that came with it which mkraid claims is version 0.90.0 ..

mabdev:~ # mkraid --version
mkraid version 0.90.0


as an experiment i also tried compiling them myself, which had no effect,
and version 0.50 doesn't even compile the first file ...

I am using 2.2.14 and 2.2.15 kernels, both of which give the same effect,
with the RAID support compiled both directly into the kernel and as
modules.

I have heard that the kernels own RAID support is only good for RAID 0 and
1, but looking around, i can only find patches for 2.2.11 or lower .. any
hints?

but now .. what happens when i try mkraid

mabdev:~ # mkraid /dev/md0
handling MD device /dev/md0
analyzing super-block
disk 0: /dev/sda1, 8883913kB, raid superblock at 8883840kB
disk 1: /dev/sdb1, 8883913kB, raid superblock at 8883840kB
disk 2: /dev/sdc1, 8883913kB, raid superblock at 8883840kB
disk 3: /dev/sdd1, 8883913kB, raid superblock at 8883840kB
disk 4: /dev/sde1, 8883913kB, raid superblock at 8883840kB
mkraid: aborted, see the syslog and /proc/mdstat for potential clues.


needless to say, niether the syslog or /proc/mdstat provide any hints
whatsoever, in fact there is nothing logged at all during this.

help?

This is the contents of /etc/raidtab

mabdev:~ # cat /etc/raidtab 
raiddev                 /dev/md0
        raid-level              5
        nr-raid-disks           5
        chunk-size              32
        persistent-superblock   1
        parity-algorithm        left-symmetric
        nr-spare-disks          0
        device                  /dev/sda1
        raid-disk               0
        device                  /dev/sdb1
        raid-disk               1
        device                  /dev/sdc1
        raid-disk               2
        device                  /dev/sdd1
        raid-disk               3
        device                  /dev/sde1
        raid-disk               4


and this is the contents from mdstat ..

mabdev:~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [4 raid5]
read_ahead not set
md0 : inactive
md1 : inactive
md2 : inactive
md3 : inactive


If anyone has any ideas I would be extremely glad to hear them, because as
far as I can tell, everything is set up as it should be ... am I missing
something?

Thanks

Maria Blackmore