From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S268756AbUJPPaX (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:30:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S268765AbUJPPaW (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:30:22 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:27042 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S268756AbUJPPaR (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:30:17 -0400 Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 08:29:37 -0700 From: Pete Zaitcev To: Christoph Hellwig Cc: schwidefsky@de.ibm.com, viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, zaitcev@redhat.com, Subject: Re: Patch to add RAID autostart to IBM partitions Message-ID: <20041016082937.62c15e6c@lembas.zaitcev.lan> In-Reply-To: <20041016110939.GB30336@infradead.org> References: <20041015224822.7d980a9e@lembas.zaitcev.lan> <20041016110939.GB30336@infradead.org> Organization: Red Hat, Inc. X-Mailer: Sylpheed-Claws 0.9.12cvs126.2 (GTK+ 2.4.7; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:09:39 +0100 Christoph Hellwig wrote: > We had this for a few partition types (and full block devices) already > and it's been vetoed. Use mdadm from initrd/initramfs instead. It is doable in theory, but in practice mdadm is too retarded (I'm taliking about mdadm 1.6.0 here). Its man page says: mdadm can perform (almost) all of its functions without having a configuration file and does not use one by default. I guess "almost" is the key. Firstly, it collapses with any attempt to run "mdadm -A -s" or any variation of such, because it's full of places like this. mddev_ident_t array_ident = conf_get_ident(configfile, dv->devname); mdfd = open_mddev(dv->devname, array_ident->autof); Obviously, array_ident is NULL if a config file is not present. It is possible to fool the stupid thing by giving it a dummy config file, like this one: DEVICE partitions ARRAY /dev/md0 It still won't scan, aborting with this: mdadm: /dev/dasda has no superblock - assembly aborted The ChangeLog looks as if someone tried to make it work, but I observe it didn't go very far. -- Pete