I'm having problems mounting a root-raid system. My raid setup is the following: md0: /dev/hda1 /dev/hdc1 md1: /dev/hda3 /dev/hdc5 md2: /dev/hda5 /dev/hdc6 (all raid1) When booting with /dev/hda2 as the root and mounting /dev/md0 on /mnt/newroot, everything comes up fine. The problem comes in with using a boot CD with dos/loadlin on it and an initrd file called rescue.gz. Basically, everything comes up fine (kernel boots, etc), but when it starts to ckraid /dev/md0, I get the following error: md:03:02: invalid superblock magic (0) on block 128448 /dev/md0: invalid argument It ckraid's the other md volumes fine (md1 and md2).. Later on in the boot I get: ckraid: version 0.36.4 parsing configuration file handling device md0 analyzing super-block disk 0: /dev/hda1, 257008kB, superblock at 256896kB /dev/hda1 is mounted ckraid: aborted then later on,: Oops!: md0 not running, giving up! isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:00, iso_blknum=16, block=32 kernel panic: unable to mount root fs on 09:00 Then everything stops. I have been working on this for two days now and I am just about to give up. If anyone can assist me, it would be much appreciated. here are my system files (from initrd image): (/bin/ash is standard bourne shell) linuxrc: #!/bin/ash if [ -s /etc/mdtab -a -f /sbin/mdadd ] then [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && echo "Adding md devices." mdadd -ar if [ $? -ne 0 -a -d /etc/raid -a -x /sbin/ckraid ]; then echo "Some of the RAID devices have errors:" for conf in /etc/raid/*.conf; do echo " Checking \"`echo $conf | sed 's?.*/\([^/]*\).conf?\1?'`\":" ckraid --fix $conf done mdstop -a mdadd -ar if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo " WARNING: unrecovered RAID errors!" fi fi fi /bin/mount -t proc /proc /proc echo 0x900 > /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev /bin/umount /proc --- snip --- /etc/fstab: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> /dev/md0 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/md1 /var ext2 defaults 0 2 /dev/md2 /usr ext2 defaults 0 2 #/dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 --- snip --- /etc/mdtab: /dev/md0 raid1 /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/md1 raid1 /dev/hda3 /dev/hdc2 /dev/md2 raid1 /dev/hda5 /dev/hdc3 dmesg -- this is from a successful boot using /dev/hda2 as the root partition: Linux version 2.2.10 (root@smtp) (gcc version 2.7.2.3) #2 Wed Jul 28 11:35:03 EDT 1999 Detected 299751905 Hz processor. Console: colour VGA+ 80x25 Calibrating delay loop... 299.01 BogoMIPS Memory: 95836k/98304k available (832k kernel code, 408k reserved, 1188k data, 40k init) CPU: Intel Pentium II (Klamath) stepping 04 Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting. Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xee880 PCI: Using configuration type 1 PCI: Probing PCI hardware Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2 Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039 NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0. NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP Starting kswapd v 1.5 Serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev a1 PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1030-0x1037, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1038-0x103f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA hda: WDC AC24300L, ATA DISK drive hdc: Maxtor 83249D3, ATA DISK drive hdd: MATSHITA CR-5850, ATAPI CDROM drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 hda: WDC AC24300L, 4112MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=557/240/63, UDMA hdc: Maxtor 83249D3, 3089MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=6278/16/63, UDMA hdd: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.55 Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306 md driver 0.36.6 MAX_MD_DEV=4, MAX_REAL=8 raid1 personality registered PCI: Enabling bus mastering for device 00:80 TLAN 1.0: eth0 irq=11 io=1020, Compaq Netelligent 10/100 TX Embedded UTP, Rev. 16 Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 > hdc: [PTBL] [784/128/63] hdc1 hdc2 hdc3 VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 40k freed REGISTER_DEV hda1 to md0 done REGISTER_DEV hdc1 to md0 done raid1: device 03:01 operational as mirror 0 raid1: device 16:01 operational as mirror 1 raid1: raid set 09:00 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors md: updating raid superblock on device 03:01, sb_offset == 256896 md: updating raid superblock on device 16:01, sb_offset == 257920 REGISTER_DEV hda3 to md1 done REGISTER_DEV hdc2 to md1 done md: 09:01: raid array is not clean -- run ckraid REGISTER_DEV hda5 to md2 done REGISTER_DEV hdc3 to md2 done md: 09:02: raid array is not clean -- run ckraid md: updating raid superblock on device 03:01, sb_offset == 256896 md: updating raid superblock on device 16:01, sb_offset == 257920 REGISTER_DEV hda1 to md0 done REGISTER_DEV hdc1 to md0 done raid1: device 03:01 operational as mirror 0 raid1: device 16:01 operational as mirror 1 raid1: raid set 09:00 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors md: updating raid superblock on device 03:01, sb_offset == 256896 md: updating raid superblock on device 16:01, sb_offset == 257920 REGISTER_DEV hda3 to md1 done REGISTER_DEV hdc2 to md1 done raid1: device 03:03 operational as mirror 0 raid1: device 16:02 operational as mirror 1 raid1: raid set 09:01 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors md: updating raid superblock on device 03:03, sb_offset == 1534592 md: updating raid superblock on device 16:02, sb_offset == 1536128 REGISTER_DEV hda5 to md2 done REGISTER_DEV hdc3 to md2 done raid1: device 03:05 operational as mirror 0 raid1: device 16:03 operational as mirror 1 raid1: raid set 09:02 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors md: updating raid superblock on device 03:05, sb_offset == 612224 md: updating raid superblock on device 16:03, sb_offset == 612800 TLAN: eth0: Starting autonegotiation. TLAN: eth0: Autonegotiation complete. TLAN: eth0: Link active. TIA --Adam