I’m convinced that mdadm is going to be the death of me. I’ve wasted numerous hours on this so far without luck.
OpenSuse 11.4 on an old Supermicro box, creating a software RAID1 array across 2 x IDE 500GB disks. Creating /dev/md0 as a 250MB partition across /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdd1 for /boot, another 465GB partition across /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdd2 as an LVM partition to hold volumes for the various other OS filesystems. After the initial installation and configuration there were a series of mishaps with faulty IDE cables that had drives failing to show up at boot. Somehow, /dev/sdd2 got configured to array /dev/md1 as a spare drive. And nothing I’ve done so far gets it to show up as an active drive.
The obvious step of failing the partition, removing it, then adding (or re-adding) will bring it back as a spare. I’ve tried roughly a dozen different permutations of those same steps. The latest was to ‘dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd2’ to clear the partition. Thought this might be the trick - after the zero, mdadm -E /dev/sdd2 reported ‘no superblock’ and no md1 configuration.
So ‘mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdd2’ and it still comes back as a spare. Here is mdadm -D /dev/md1
/dev/md1:
Version : 1.0
Creation Time : Sat Jul 9 10:26:01 2011
Raid Level : raid1
Array Size : 488119160 (465.51 GiB 499.83 GB)
Used Dev Size : 488119160 (465.51 GiB 499.83 GB)
Raid Devices : 2
Total Devices : 2
Persistence : Superblock is persistent
Intent Bitmap : Internal
Update Time : Sun Aug 7 14:57:29 2011
State : active, degraded
Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 0
Spare Devices : 1
Name : linux:1
UUID : ca504730:4bbac974:8ade88e2:6307210b
Events : 80190
Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
0 0 0 0 removed
1 8 2 1 active sync /dev/sda2
2 8 50 - spare /dev/sdd2
I can’t stop this array, the OS is running from there. I can’t easily boot from CD to repair, all IDE ports have disks attached.
Does anyone have an incantation to promote a spare to active ??
I see this is your first post. Welcome to these forums.
There are people here who know more about *mdadm, *but I am not one of those, thus have some patience until at least the world turned fully around and everybody got awake
In the meantime, I see that you tried to post your computer output as readable as possible by making it a fixed font. It will get even better if you use CODE tags instead. Because the way to do that is not very obvious, we have a small guide for that: Posting in Code Tags - A Guide
dm6079 wrote:
> I’m convinced that mdadm is going to be the death of me. I’ve wasted
> numerous hours on this so far without luck.
>
> OpenSuse 11.4 on an old Supermicro box, creating a software RAID1 array
> across 2 x IDE 500GB disks. Creating /dev/md0 as a 250MB partition
> across /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdd1 for /boot, another 465GB partition across
> /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdd2 as an LVM partition to hold volumes for the
> various other OS filesystems. After the initial installation and
> configuration there were a series of mishaps with faulty IDE cables that
> had drives failing to show up at boot. Somehow, /dev/sdd2 got
> configured to array /dev/md1 as a spare drive. And nothing I’ve done so
> far gets it to show up as an active drive.
>
> The obvious step of failing the partition, removing it, then adding (or
> re-adding) will bring it back as a spare. I’ve tried roughly a dozen
> different permutations of those same steps. The latest was to ‘dd
> if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd2’ to clear the partition. Thought this might be
> the trick - after the zero, mdadm -E /dev/sdd2 reported ‘no superblock’
> and no md1 configuration.
>
> So ‘mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdd2’ and it still comes back as a spare.
> Here is mdadm -D /dev/md1
>
> /dev/md1:
> Version : 1.0
> Creation Time : Sat Jul 9 10:26:01 2011
> Raid Level : raid1
> Array Size : 488119160 (465.51 GiB 499.83 GB)
> Used Dev Size : 488119160 (465.51 GiB 499.83 GB)
> Raid Devices : 2
> Total Devices : 2
> Persistence : Superblock is persistent
>
>
> Intent Bitmap : Internal
>
> Update Time : Sun Aug 7 14:57:29 2011
> State : active, degraded
> Active Devices : 1
> Working Devices : 2
> Failed Devices : 0
> Spare Devices : 1
>
> Name : linux:1
> UUID : ca504730:4bbac974:8ade88e2:6307210b
> Events : 80190
>
> Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
> 0 0 0 0 removed
> 1 8 2 1 active sync /dev/sda2
>
> 2 8 50 - spare /dev/sdd2
>
>
> I can’t stop this array, the OS is running from there. I can’t easily
> boot from CD to repair, all IDE ports have disks attached.
>
> Does anyone have an incantation to promote a spare to active ??
>
> thanks,
> Don M.
Just skimming quickly, so some fairly random ideas …
Apart from the mdadm man page, other links I’ve found useful include: