Public bug reported: On a Sun e420 during the install, I created my volumes as follows:
/dev/sda1 /boot /dev/md0 /home (/dev/sd[ab]8) /dev/md1 / (/dev/sd[ab]2) /dev/md2 /usr (/dev/sd[ab]4) /dev/md3 swap (/dev/sd[ab]5) /dev/md4 /tmp (/dev/sd[ab]6) /dev/md5 /var (/dev/sd[ab]7) and completed the install. Upon reboot, my RAID volumes were started as: /dev/sda1 /boot /dev/md0 / /dev/md1 /usr /dev/md2 swap /dev/md3 /tmp /dev/md4 /var /dev/md5 /home apparently started in order of discovery (/dev/sda1 through /dev/sda8), not honoring the preferred minor or /etc/mdadm.conf, and rendering my system unbootable until I did some surgery. After the surgery, I patched to date (incl kernel 2.6.15-25) and did an event-free reboot. At this point, the raid volumes are: /dev/md0 /boot (/dev/sd[ab]1) /dev/md1 / (/dev/sd[ab]2) /dev/md2 /usr (/dev/sd[ab]4) /dev/md3 swap (/dev/sd[ab]5) /dev/md4 /tmp (/dev/sd[ab]6) /dev/md5 /var (/dev/sd[ab]7) /dev/md6 /home (/dev/sd[ab]8) I created two raid volumes mdadm -C -l5 -c64 -n6 -x0 /dev/md11 /dev/sd[cdefgh] mdadm -C -l5 -c64 -n6 -x0 /dev/md12 /dev/sd[ijklmn] As you can see, my RAID volume components do have the preferred minor listed correctly prior to rebooting (the array is still building here): [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# mdadm -E /dev/sdc (d-h report similar) /dev/sdc: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.03 UUID : 71063e4f:f3a0c78b:12a4584b:a8cd9402 Creation Time : Thu Jun 15 15:21:36 2006 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 6 Preferred Minor : 11 Update Time : Thu Jun 15 15:28:42 2006 State : clean Active Devices : 5 Working Devices : 6 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 54875fd8 - correct Events : 0.48 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 32 0 active sync /dev/sdc 0 0 8 32 0 active sync /dev/sdc 1 1 8 48 1 active sync /dev/sdd 2 2 8 64 2 active sync /dev/sde 3 3 8 80 3 active sync /dev/sdf 4 4 8 96 4 active sync /dev/sdg 5 5 0 0 5 faulty removed 6 6 8 112 6 spare /dev/sdh my mdadm.conf is set correctly: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf DEVICE partitions DEVICE /dev/sd[cdefghijklmn] ARRAY /dev/md11 level=raid5 num-devices=6 UUID=71063e4f:f3a0c78b:12a4584b:a8cd9402 ARRAY /dev/md12 level=raid5 num-devices=6 UUID=456e8cd0:0f23591b:14a0ff9f:1a302d54 ARRAY /dev/md6 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=4b33d5c5:80846d59:dba11e6d:814823f3 ARRAY /dev/md5 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=76f34ac9:d74a2d9c:d0fc0f95:eab326d2 ARRAY /dev/md4 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=0eed0b47:c6e81eea:3ed1c7a6:3ed2a756 ARRAY /dev/md3 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=1d626217:4d20944a:5dbbcb0d:dd7c6e3d ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=102303be:19a3252d:48a3f79e:33f16ce1 ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=30eedd12:b5b69786:97b18df5:7efabcbf ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=9b28e9d5:944316d7:f0aacc8b:d5d82b98 And yet when I reboot /dev/md11 is started as /dev/md7 and /dev/md12 is started as /dev/md8. [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] [raid5] md8 : active raid5 sdi[0] sdn[6] sdm[4] sdl[3] sdk[2] sdj[1] 177832000 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/5] [UUUUU_] [>....................] recovery = 0.0% (28416/35566400) finish=561.1min speed=10520K/sec md7 : active raid5 sdc[0] sdh[6] sdg[4] sdf[3] sde[2] sdd[1] 177832000 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/5] [UUUUU_] [>....................] recovery = 0.0% (29184/35566400) finish=567.9min speed=10420K/sec md6 : active raid1 sda8[0] sdb8[1] 6474112 blocks [2/2] [UU] md5 : active raid1 sda7[0] sdb7[1] 14651200 blocks [2/2] [UU] md4 : active raid1 sda6[0] sdb6[1] 995904 blocks [2/2] [UU] md3 : active raid1 sda5[0] sdb5[1] 7815552 blocks [2/2] [UU] md2 : active raid1 sda4[0] sdb4[1] 4996096 blocks [2/2] [UU] md1 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1] 497920 blocks [2/2] [UU] md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1] 120384 blocks [2/2] [UU] unused devices: <none> You'll notice that the preferred minor is set correctly: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# mdadm -E /dev/sdc /dev/sdc: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.03 UUID : 71063e4f:f3a0c78b:12a4584b:a8cd9402 Creation Time : Thu Jun 15 15:21:36 2006 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 6 Preferred Minor : 11 Update Time : Thu Jun 15 15:28:42 2006 State : clean Active Devices : 5 Working Devices : 6 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 54875fd8 - correct Events : 0.48 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 32 0 active sync /dev/sdc 0 0 8 32 0 active sync /dev/sdc 1 1 8 48 1 active sync /dev/sdd 2 2 8 64 2 active sync /dev/sde 3 3 8 80 3 active sync /dev/sdf 4 4 8 96 4 active sync /dev/sdg 5 5 0 0 5 faulty removed 6 6 8 112 6 spare /dev/sdh The preferred minor is available in the initramfs, so there's no reason it shouldn't be used to restart the arrays (for i in /dev/hd* /dev/sd*; do mdadm -E $i; done, etc..) I'm fairly certain that I've done similar non-linear md layouts in the past on Ubuntu (hoary/breezy), and it worked without problems, although I can't say that I've done any this way in Dapper. And before someone reads this and says I'm asking for trouble, it *is* possible to safely do a RAID1 /boot on Sparc without issues, but that's a separate issue. ** Affects: initramfs-tools (Ubuntu) Importance: Untriaged Status: Unconfirmed -- initramfs/mdrun doesn't honor preferred minor when starting RAID volumes https://launchpad.net/bugs/49914 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs