Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread Doug Ledford
On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 09:55 +1000, Neil Brown wrote:

> As for where the metadata "should" be placed, it is interesting to
> observe that the SNIA's "DDFv1.2" puts it at the end of the device.
> And as DDF is an industry standard sponsored by multiple companies it
> must be ..
> Sorry.  I had intended to say "correct", but when it came to it, my
> fingers refused to type that word in that context.
> 
> DDF is in a somewhat different situation though.  It assumes that the
> components are whole devices, and that the controller has exclusive
> access - there is no way another controller could interpret the
> devices differently before the DDF controller has a chance.

Putting a superblock at the end of a device works around OS
compatibility issues and other things related to transitioning the
device from part of an array to not, etc.  But, it works if and only if
you have the guarantee you mention.  Long, long ago I tinkered with the
idea of md multipath devices using an end of device superblock on the
whole device to allow reliable multipath detection and autostart,
failover of all partitions on a device when a command to any partition
failed, ability to use standard partition tables, etc. while being 100%
transparent to the rest of the OS.  The second you considered FC
connected devices and multi-OS access, that fell apart in a big way.
Very analogous.

So, I wouldn't necessarily call it wrong, but it's fragile.

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deleting mdadm array?

2007-10-25 Thread Janek Kozicki
Hello,

I just created a new array /dev/md1 like this:

mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1 --chunk=64 --level=raid5 \
   --metadata=1.1  --bitmap=internal \
   --raid-devices=3 /dev/hdc2 /dev/sda2 missing


But later I changed my mind, and I wanted to use chunk 128. Do I need
to delete this array somehow first, or can I just create an array
again (overwriting the current one)?

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Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread David Greaves
Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Neil Brown wrote:
>> As for where the metadata "should" be placed, it is interesting to
>> observe that the SNIA's "DDFv1.2" puts it at the end of the device.
>> And as DDF is an industry standard sponsored by multiple companies it
>> must be ..
>> Sorry.  I had intended to say "correct", but when it came to it, my
>> fingers refused to type that word in that context.

>> For the record, I have no intention of deprecating any of the metadata
>> formats, not even 0.90.
> 
> strongly agreed

I didn't get a reply to my suggestion of separating the data and location...

ie not talking about superblock versions 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 etc but a data
format (0.9 vs 1.0) and a location (end,start,offset4k)?

This would certainly make things a lot clearer to new (and old!) users:

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata 1.0 --meta-location offset4k
or
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata 1.0 --meta-location start
or
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata 1.0 --meta-location end

resulting in:
mdadm --detail /dev/md0

/dev/md0:
Version : 01.0
  Metadata-locn : End-of-device
  Creation Time : Fri Aug  4 23:05:02 2006
 Raid Level : raid0

You provide rational defaults for mortals and this approach allows people like
Doug to do wacky HA things explicitly.

I'm not sure you need any changes to the kernel code - probably just the docs
and mdadm.

>> It is conceivable that I could change the default, though that would
>> require a decision as to what the new default would be.  I think it
>> would have to be 1.0 or it would cause too much confusion.
> 
> A newer default would be nice.

I also suspect that a *lot* of people will assume that the highest superblock
version is the best and should be used for new installs etc.

So if you make 1.0 the default then how many users will try 'the bleeding edge'
and use 1.2? So then you have 1.3 which is the same as 1.0? H? So to quote
from an old Soap: "Confused, you  will be..."

David
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Re: deleting mdadm array?

2007-10-25 Thread Neil Brown
On Thursday October 25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I just created a new array /dev/md1 like this:
> 
> mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1 --chunk=64 --level=raid5 \
>--metadata=1.1  --bitmap=internal \
>--raid-devices=3 /dev/hdc2 /dev/sda2 missing
> 
> 
> But later I changed my mind, and I wanted to use chunk 128. Do I need
> to delete this array somehow first, or can I just create an array
> again (overwriting the current one)?

Just recreate with new values, overwriting the current one.

NeilBrown
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Re: deleting mdadm array?

2007-10-25 Thread David Greaves
Janek Kozicki wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I just created a new array /dev/md1 like this:
> 
> mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1 --chunk=64 --level=raid5 \
>--metadata=1.1  --bitmap=internal \
>--raid-devices=3 /dev/hdc2 /dev/sda2 missing
> 
> 
> But later I changed my mind, and I wanted to use chunk 128. Do I need
> to delete this array somehow first, or can I just create an array
> again (overwriting the current one)?

How much later? This will, of course, destroy any data on the array (!) and
you'll need to mkfs again...


To answer the question though: just run mdadm again to create a new array with
new parameters.


I think the only time you need to 'delete' an array before creating a new one is
if you change the superblock version since it quietly writes different
superblocks to different disk locations you may end up with 2 superblocks on the
disk and then you get confusion :)
(I'm not sure if mdadm is clever about this though...)

Also, if you don't mind me asking: why did you choose version 1.1 for the
metadata/superblock version?

David

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Re: deleting mdadm array?

2007-10-25 Thread Neil Brown
On Thursday October 25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I think the only time you need to 'delete' an array before creating a new one 
> is
> if you change the superblock version since it quietly writes different
> superblocks to different disk locations you may end up with 2 superblocks on 
> the
> disk and then you get confusion :)
> (I'm not sure if mdadm is clever about this though...)
> 

Mdadm tries to be clever.

When creating an array, it zeros any superblocks that it finds on the
array in any of the expected locations.
And when guessing the metadata format used, if it find two or more, it
chooses the one with the more recent create timestamp.

NeilBrown
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Re: Raid-10 mount at startup always has problem

2007-10-25 Thread Daniel L. Miller

Neil Brown wrote:

It might be worth finding out where mdadm is being run in the init
scripts and add a "-v" flag, and redirecting stdout/stderr to some log
file.
e.g.
   mdadm -As  -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1

And see if that leaves something useful in the log file.

  
I haven't rebooted yet, but here's my /etc/udev/rules.d/70-mdadm.rules 
file (BTW - running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy):


SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add|change", 
ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="linux_raid*", RUN+="watershed -i udev-mdadm 
/sbin/mdadm -As -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1"


# This next line (only) is put into the initramfs,
#  where we run a strange script to activate only some of the arrays
#  as configured, instead of mdadm -As:
#initramfs# SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add|change", 
ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="linux_raid*", RUN+="watershed -i udev-mdadm 
/scripts/local-top/mdadm from-udev"



Could that initramfs line be causing the problem?
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Re: Raid-10 mount at startup always has problem

2007-10-25 Thread Daniel L. Miller

Neil Brown wrote:

It might be worth finding out where mdadm is being run in the init
scripts and add a "-v" flag, and redirecting stdout/stderr to some log
file.
e.g.
   mdadm -As  -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1

And see if that leaves something useful in the log file.

  

I haven't rebooted yet, but here's my /etc/udev/rules.d/70-mdadm.rules
file (BTW - running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy):

SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add|change",
ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="linux_raid*", RUN+="watershed -i udev-mdadm
/sbin/mdadm -As -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1"

# This next line (only) is put into the initramfs,
#  where we run a strange script to activate only some of the arrays
#  as configured, instead of mdadm -As:
#initramfs# SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add|change",
ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="linux_raid*", RUN+="watershed -i udev-mdadm
/scripts/local-top/mdadm from-udev"


Could that initramfs line be causing the problem?
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Re: deleting mdadm array?

2007-10-25 Thread Janek Kozicki
David Greaves said: (by the date of Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:55:44 +0100)

> How much later? This will, of course, destroy any data on the array (!) and
> you'll need to mkfs again...

Just after, I didn't even create LVM volume on it (not mentioning
formatting it).

> Also, if you don't mind me asking: why did you choose version 1.1 for the
> metadata/superblock version?

In "time to deprecate old RAID formats" Doug Ledford said, that 1.1
is safest when used with LVM. I wish that this info would get into
the man page. I just hope that grub will be able to boot from LVM 
from '/' partition raid1 (version 1.1), I didn't check this yet.


Doug Ledford said: (by the date of Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:15:34 -0400)

> 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 are the same format, just in different positions on
> the disk.  Of the three, the 1.1 format is the safest to use since it
> won't allow you to accidentally have some sort of metadata between the
> beginning of the disk and the raid superblock (such as an lvm2
> superblock), and hence whenever the raid array isn't up, you won't be
> able to accidentally mount the lvm2 volumes, filesystem, etc.  (In worse
> case situations, I've seen lvm2 find a superblock on one RAID1 array
> member when the RAID1 array was down, the system came up, you used the
> system, the two copies of the raid array were made drastically
> inconsistent, then at the next reboot, the situation that prevented the
> RAID1 from starting was resolved, and it never know it failed to start
> last time, and the two inconsistent members we put back into a clean
> array).  So, deprecating any of these is not really helpful.  And you
> need to keep the old 0.90 format around for back compatibility with
> thousands of existing raid arrays.
> 


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Re: Raid-10 mount at startup always has problem

2007-10-25 Thread Bill Davidsen

Neil Brown wrote:

On Wednesday October 24, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  

Current mdadm.conf:
DEVICE partitions
ARRAY /dev/.static/dev/md0 level=raid10 num-devices=4 
UUID=9d94b17b:f5fac31a:577c252b:0d4c4b2a auto=part


still have the problem where on boot one drive is not part of the 
array.  Is there a log file I can check to find out WHY a drive is not 
being added?  It's been a while since the reboot, but I did find some 
entries in dmesg - I'm appending both the md lines and the physical disk 
related lines.  The bottom shows one disk not being added (this time is 
was sda) - and the disk that gets skipped on each boot seems to be 
random - there's no consistent failure:



Odd but interesting.
Does it sometimes fail to start the array altogether?

  

md: md0 stopped.
md: md0 stopped.
md: bind
md: bind
md: bind
md: md0: raid array is not clean -- starting background reconstruction
raid10: raid set md0 active with 3 out of 4 devices
md: couldn't update array info. -22


  ^^^

This is the most surprising line, and hence the one most likely to
convey helpful information.

This message is generated when a process calls "SET_ARRAY_INFO" on an
array that is already running, and the changes implied by the new
"array_info" are not supportable.

The only way I can see this happening is if two copies of "mdadm" are
running at exactly the same time and are both are trying to assemble
the same array.  The first calls SET_ARRAY_INFO and assembles the
(partial) array.  The second calls SET_ARRAY_INFO and gets this error.
Not all devices are included because while when one mdadm when to
look, at a device, the other has it locked and so the first just
ignored it.

I just tried that, and sometimes it worked, but sometimes it assembled
with 3 out of 4 devices.  I didn't get the "couldn't update array info"
message, but that doesn't prove I'm wrong.

I cannot imagine how that might be happening (two at once) unless
maybe 'udev' had been configured to do something as soon as devices
were discovered seems unlikely.

It might be worth finding out where mdadm is being run in the init
scripts and add a "-v" flag, and redirecting stdout/stderr to some log
file.
e.g.
   mdadm -As  -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1

And see if that leaves something useful in the log file.

BTW, I don't think your problem has anything to do with the fact that
you are using whole partitions.
  


You don't think the "unknown partition table" on sdd is related? Because 
I read that as a sure indication that the system isn't considering the 
drive as one without a partition table, and therefore isn't looking for 
the superblock on the whole device. And as Doug pointed out, once you 
decide that there is a partition table lots of things might try to use it.

While it is debatable whether that is a good idea or not (I like the
idea, but Doug doesn't and I respect his opinion) I doubt it would
contribute to the current problem.


Your description makes me nearly certain that there is some sort of
race going on (that is the easiest way to explain randomly differing
behaviours).   The race is probably between different code 'locking'
(opening with O_EXCL) the various devices.  Give the above error
message, two different 'mdadm's seems most likely, but an mdadm and a
mount-by-label scan could probably do it too.
  

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Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread Bill Davidsen

Neil Brown wrote:

I certainly accept that the documentation is probably less that
perfect (by a large margin).  I am more than happy to accept patches
or concrete suggestions on how to improve that.  I always think it is
best if a non-developer writes documentation (and a developer reviews
it) as then it is more likely to address the issues that a
non-developer will want to read about, and in a way that will make
sense to a non-developer. (i.e. I'm to close to the subject to write
good doco).


Patches against what's in 2.6.4 I assume? I can't promise to write 
anything which pleases even me, but I will take a look at it.


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Multipath and nbd

2007-10-25 Thread Bill Davidsen
I am at the design stage for a new server. That's when you try to 
convince a client that they have an unfavorable ratio of requirements to 
budget. I am thinking a raid-1, with a mirror to an nbd device running 
write-mostly. I will have redundant network paths to the other machine, 
one via a dedicated cable and P-t-P connection, and the other via a 
switch going to the general internal network.


Am I going into deep waters to try and do something helpful with 
multipath features here, or should I stick to a network only solution, 
and give the switched route a higher metric to force traffic through the 
dedicated link?


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Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread David Greaves
Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Neil Brown wrote:
>> I certainly accept that the documentation is probably less that
>> perfect (by a large margin).  I am more than happy to accept patches
>> or concrete suggestions on how to improve that.  I always think it is
>> best if a non-developer writes documentation (and a developer reviews
>> it) as then it is more likely to address the issues that a
>> non-developer will want to read about, and in a way that will make
>> sense to a non-developer. (i.e. I'm to close to the subject to write
>> good doco).
> 
> Patches against what's in 2.6.4 I assume? I can't promise to write
> anything which pleases even me, but I will take a look at it.
> 

The man page is a great place for describing, eg, the superblock location; but
don't forget we have
  http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php/Main_Page
which is probably a better place for *discussions* (or essays) about the
superblock location (eg the LVM / v1.1 comment Janek picked up on)

In fact I was going to take some of the writings from this thread and put them
up there.

David
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Re: Raid-10 mount at startup always has problem

2007-10-25 Thread Daniel L. Miller

Bill Davidsen wrote:
You don't think the "unknown partition table" on sdd is related? 
Because I read that as a sure indication that the system isn't 
considering the drive as one without a partition table, and therefore 
isn't looking for the superblock on the whole device. And as Doug 
pointed out, once you decide that there is a partition table lots of 
things might try to use it.  
Now, would the drive "letters" (sd[a-d]) change from reboot-to-reboot?  
Because it's not consistent - so far I've seen each of the four drives 
at one time or another fail during the boot.


I've added the verbose logging to the udev mdadm rule, and I've also 
manually specified the drives in mdadm.conf instead of leaving it on 
auto.  Curious what the next boot will bring.


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Test

2007-10-25 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Sorry for consuming bandwidth - but all of a sudden I'm not seeing 
messages.  Is this going through?


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Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread Doug Ledford
On Wed, 2007-10-24 at 16:22 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Doug Ledford wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 16:39 -0400, John Stoffel wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> I don't agree completely.  I think the superblock location is a key
> >> issue, because if you have a superblock location which moves depending
> >> the filesystem or LVM you use to look at the partition (or full disk)
> >> then you need to be even more careful about how to poke at things.
> >> 
> >
> > This is the heart of the matter.  When you consider that each file
> > system and each volume management stack has a superblock, and they some
> > store their superblocks at the end of devices and some at the beginning,
> > and they can be stacked, then it becomes next to impossible to make sure
> > a stacked setup is never recognized incorrectly under any circumstance.
> > It might be possible if you use static device names, but our users
> > *long* ago complained very loudly when adding a new disk or removing a
> > bad disk caused their setup to fail to boot.  So, along came mount by
> > label and auto scans for superblocks.  Once you do that, you *really*
> > need all the superblocks at the same end of a device so when you stack
> > things, it always works properly.
> Let me be devil's advocate, I noted in another post that location might 
> be raid level dependent. For raid-1 putting the superblock at the end 
> allows the BIOS to treat a single partition as a bootable unit.

This is true for both the 1.0 and 1.2 superblock formats.  The BIOS
couldn't care less if there is an offset to the filesystem because it
doesn't try to read from the filesystem.  It just jumps to the first 512
byte sector and that's it.  Grub/Lilo are the ones that have to know
about the offset, and they would be made aware of the offset at install
time.

So, we are back to the exact same thing I was talking about.  With the
superblock at the beginning of the device, you don't hinder bootability
with or without the raid working, the raid would be bootable regardless
as long as you made it bootable, it only hinders accessing the
filesystem via a running linux installation without bringing up the
raid.

>  For all 
> other arrangements the end location puts the superblock where it is 
> slightly more likely to be overwritten, and where it must be moved if 
> the partition grows or whatever.
> 
> There really may be no "right" answer.

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Test 2

2007-10-25 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Thanks for the test responses - I have re-subscribed...if I see this 
myself...I'm back!

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Re: Test

2007-10-25 Thread Justin Piszcz

Success.

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Daniel L. Miller wrote:

Sorry for consuming bandwidth - but all of a sudden I'm not seeing messages. 
Is this going through?


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Re: Test 2

2007-10-25 Thread Justin Piszcz

Success 2.

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Daniel L. Miller wrote:

Thanks for the test responses - I have re-subscribed...if I see this 
myself...I'm back!

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Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread Neil Brown
On Thursday October 25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> I didn't get a reply to my suggestion of separating the data and location...

No. Sorry.

> 
> ie not talking about superblock versions 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 etc but a data
> format (0.9 vs 1.0) and a location (end,start,offset4k)?
> 
> This would certainly make things a lot clearer to new (and old!) users:
> 
> mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata 1.0 --meta-location offset4k
> or
> mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata 1.0 --meta-location start
> or
> mdadm --create /dev/md0 --metadata 1.0 --meta-location end

I'm happy to support synonyms.  How about

   --metadata 1-end
   --metadata 1-start

??

> 
> resulting in:
> mdadm --detail /dev/md0
> 
> /dev/md0:
> Version : 01.0
>   Metadata-locn : End-of-device

It already lists the superblock location as a sector offset, but I
don't have a problem with reporting:

  Version : 1.0 (metadata at end of device)
  Version : 1.1 (metadata at start of device)

Would that help?


>   Creation Time : Fri Aug  4 23:05:02 2006
>  Raid Level : raid0
> 
> You provide rational defaults for mortals and this approach allows people like
> Doug to do wacky HA things explicitly.
> 
> I'm not sure you need any changes to the kernel code - probably just the docs
> and mdadm.

True.

> 
> >> It is conceivable that I could change the default, though that would
> >> require a decision as to what the new default would be.  I think it
> >> would have to be 1.0 or it would cause too much confusion.
> > 
> > A newer default would be nice.
> 
> I also suspect that a *lot* of people will assume that the highest superblock
> version is the best and should be used for new installs etc.

Grumble... why can't people expect what I want them to expect?

> 
> So if you make 1.0 the default then how many users will try 'the bleeding 
> edge'
> and use 1.2? So then you have 1.3 which is the same as 1.0? H? So to quote
> from an old Soap: "Confused, you  will be..."
:-)

NeilBrown
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Re: Time to deprecate old RAID formats?

2007-10-25 Thread Neil Brown
On Thursday October 25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Neil Brown wrote:
> > I certainly accept that the documentation is probably less that
> > perfect (by a large margin).  I am more than happy to accept patches
> > or concrete suggestions on how to improve that.  I always think it is
> > best if a non-developer writes documentation (and a developer reviews
> > it) as then it is more likely to address the issues that a
> > non-developer will want to read about, and in a way that will make
> > sense to a non-developer. (i.e. I'm to close to the subject to write
> > good doco).
> 
> Patches against what's in 2.6.4 I assume? I can't promise to write 
> anything which pleases even me, but I will take a look at it.

Any text at all would be welcome, but yes; patches against 2.6.4 would
be easiest.

Thanks
NeilBrown
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Re: Raid-10 mount at startup always has problem

2007-10-25 Thread Neil Brown
On Thursday October 25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Neil Brown wrote:
> >
> > BTW, I don't think your problem has anything to do with the fact that
> > you are using whole partitions.
> >   
> 
> You don't think the "unknown partition table" on sdd is related? Because 
> I read that as a sure indication that the system isn't considering the 
> drive as one without a partition table, and therefore isn't looking for 
> the superblock on the whole device. And as Doug pointed out, once you 
> decide that there is a partition table lots of things might try to use it.

"unknown partition table" is what I would expect when using whole
drive.
It just mean "the first block doesn't look like a partition table",
and if you have some early block of an ext3 (or other) filesystem in
the first block (as you would in this case), you wouldn't expect it to
look like a partition table.

I don't understand what you are trying to say with your second
sentence.

NeilBrown
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Re: Raid-10 mount at startup always has problem

2007-10-25 Thread Neil Brown
On Thursday October 25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Neil Brown wrote:
> > It might be worth finding out where mdadm is being run in the init
> > scripts and add a "-v" flag, and redirecting stdout/stderr to some log
> > file.
> > e.g.
> >mdadm -As  -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1
> >
> > And see if that leaves something useful in the log file.
> >
> >   
> I haven't rebooted yet, but here's my /etc/udev/rules.d/70-mdadm.rules
> file (BTW - running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy):
> 
> SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add|change",
> ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="linux_raid*", RUN+="watershed -i udev-mdadm
> /sbin/mdadm -As -v > /var/log/mdadm-$$ 2>&1"

Yes, that would do exactly what you are experiencing.
Every time a component of a raid array is discovered, it will try to
assemble all known arrays.
So one drive appears, it tries to assemble the array but there aren't
enough so it gives up.
Then two drives.  Chances are there still aren't enough, so it gives
up again.
Then when there are three drives it will successfully assemble the
array - degraded.

Then when there are 4 drives, it will be too late.  I cannot see why
that would lead to the "cannot update array info" error, but it
certainly explains the rest.

That is really bad stuff to have in udev.
The "--incremental" mode was written precisely for use in udev.  I
wonder why they didn't use it

Maybe you should log a bug report with Ubuntu and suggest they discuss
their udev scripts with the developer of mdadm (that would be me I
guess).

NeilBrown
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Re: Test 2

2007-10-25 Thread Janek Kozicki
Daniel L. Miller said: (by the date of Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:32:31 -0700)

> Thanks for the test responses - I have re-subscribed...if I see this 
> myself...I'm back!

I know that gmail doesn't allow to see your own posts on mailing
lists. Only posts from other people. Maybe you have a similar problem?


-- 
Janek Kozicki |
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