[Yaird-devel] Bug#351183: --run does not fix the disk renaming problem

[Brendan Cully]

On Tuesday, 06 June 2006 at 08:53, dean gaudet wrote:
> On Mon, 29 May 2006, Brendan Cully wrote:
> 
> > So I vote heartily to add --run to the yaird mdadm template. Patch
> > attached for your convenience.
> 
> i think --run is a bad idea... the docs say nothing about it helping to
> start a degraded array:
> 
> 	Insist	that  mdadm run the array, even if some of the components
> 	appear to be active in another array or filesystem.  Normally
> 	mdadm will ask for confirmation before including such components
> 	in an array.  This  option  causes that question to be suppressed.

That's run in the "for create, build, or grow" section of the
manual. If you keep going to the "for assemble" section, you'll find
this:

   -R, --run
          Attempt to start the array even if fewer drives were given
          than  are  needed  for  a  full array. Normally if not all
          drives are found and --scan is not used,  then  the  array
          will  be assembled but not started.  With --run an attempt
          will be made to start it anyway.

If that also sounds a little suspect, further down find this:

   Normally  the  array will be started after it is assembled.  How-
   ever if --scan is not given and insufficient drives  were  listed
   to  start  a complete (non-degraded) array, then the array is not
   started (to guard against usage  errors).   To  insist  that  the
   array be started in this case (as may work for RAID1, 4, 5, 6, or
   10), give the --run flag.

> i'm skeptical that at this point in boot any of the components would be
> in use anywhere else since we're trying to construct the root filesystem.
> 
> Brendan did you test this patch?  from your description it sounds like
> you had fixed your problem from a rescue disk before developing the patch...

If I remember correctly, what I actually did was:
- I booted from a rescue disk
- let it rebuild for a while
- got impatient to run debian again
- unpacked the debian ramdisk, added --run by hand, repacked it
- rebooted and found peace.