Bug#379019: mdadm: Spurious and confusing error messages from checkarray

[Laurent Bonnaud]

Package: mdadm
Version: 2.5.2-7
Severity: normal


Hi,

on this system I installed mdadm but did not configure any RAID array
yet (let's say that I did not have time yet or that I am waiting for
additionnal disks).  I received an e-mail from cron with this error
message:

checkarray: E: no kernel support for parity checks.

The /usr/share/mdadm/checkarray script looks for 

  /sys/block/md*/md/sync_action

to check if the kernel has support for parity checks.  This test is not
the correct one if there is no active RAID array.  Therefore I suggest
to add another test before this one to test the existence of any active
RAID array and exit silently if none is detected.


-- Package-specific info:
--- mount output
[...]

--- mdadm.conf
DEVICE partitions
MAILADDR root

--- /proc/mdstat:
Personalities : 
unused devices: <none>

--- /proc/partitions:
major minor  #blocks  name

   8     0  117187500 sda
   8     1   39062016 sda1
   8     2   78124095 sda2

--- initrd.img-2.6.17-1-686:
24073 blocks
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/xor.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/dm-mirror.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid0.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/linear.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid1.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid10.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid5.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/dm-snapshot.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/dm-mod.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/multipath.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid6.ko
lib/modules/2.6.17-1-686/kernel/drivers/md/md-mod.ko
scripts/local-top/mdadm
conf/mdadm.conf
sbin/mdadm

--- /proc/modules:
dm_mirror 18768 0 - Live 0xf0966000
dm_snapshot 15680 0 - Live 0xf096c000
dm_mod 49976 2 dm_mirror,dm_snapshot, Live 0xf099a000

--- volume detail:


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (100, 'unstable'), (99, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17-1-686
Locale: LANG=fr_FR at euro, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR at euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages mdadm depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]        1.5.2       Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                        2.3.999.2-8 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  lsb-base                     3.1-10      Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  makedev                      3.3.8.2-0   Creates device files in /dev

Versions of packages mdadm recommends:
ii  ssmtp [mail-transport-agent]  2.61-7     extremely simple MTA to get mail o

-- debconf information:
* mdadm/start_daemon: true
* mdadm/autocheck: true
* mdadm/autostart: true
  mdadm/initrdstart: all
* mdadm/warning:
* mdadm/mail_to: root