Bug#554461: udev: partitions on sd* belonging to a software raid are not populated

[Andrea Palazzi]

> This is not really an mdadm bug.  It is a bug with the
> 0.90 metadata format.
[...]
> The easiest way to deal with this situation is to tell
> mdadm whether you want
> to use partitions or whole devices.  You do this with
> the "DEVICE" line in
> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

This Has Been Tried(TM); It Did Not Work(TM).

The main problem is that the partition (usually /dev/sdc1, but not always) doesn't show up, and without this partition mdadm cannot build the array.
However the partition is still there, as fdisk -l /dev/sdc confirms; but udev or whoever does not create the corresponding device.

I did some other testing; the problem doesn't show up with another kernel, either 2.6.26, 2.6.31 and 2.6.32-rc8. I also installed another debian testing in a virtualbox, and here also the problem doesn't show up, with the 2.6.30 kernel.

I insist for the race condition: this is also coherent with the different behaviour on the same system.

If you want me to do some testing to find the problem ask now, because that system will be soon wiped out.

Andrea Palazzi