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

[Jason Lunz]

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 08:53:45AM -0700, dean gaudet wrote:
> please take a look at the README.initramfs file which appears in unstale
> mdadm packages ... (such as the 2.4.1-5 that's now in unstable).  it says
> the following:
> 
>   We do not need to create device files for the components which will
>   be assembled into /dev/mda.  mdadm finds the major/minor numbers from
>   /proc/partitions and creates a temporary /dev file if one doesn't already
>   exist.
> 
> this is why "-Ac partitions" will work...  Neil documented this in

ah, I wasn't aware of this. thank you.

> i'd be totally happy if the fix appears only in etch.  if you really want
> it to appear in sarge (i assume you're thinking of some planned bugfix
> release) then i'll go start petitioning the mdadm maintainer to upgrade
> to the last 1.12.x in sarge.  but we need to fix the bug somewhere and
> i'm happy to start with etch and yaird...

I can certainly live with an etch-only solution. yaird's not even in
sarge.

> fwiw i'm actively running the patch i originally posted... and i've
> suggested the use of yaird and my patch to many users on linux-raid who
> have had device renaming issues on unstable/etch -- and it's working
> for all of us...

If '-Ac partitions' works as you say, then either that or '--run' should
both work in the event of drive loss, and '-Ac partitions' should
additionally work in the event of drive reordering.

The downside of '-Ac partitions' is that if used in yaird, then
backported, it'll crash the mdadm in sarge. That's a pretty minor
problem, IMO. I've cc:ed Norbert Tretkowski so he'll be aware that
future yaird backports might depend on an mdadm backport.

I'm in favor of the superior partition scanning solution if that's been
shown to work properly in an initramfs environment, and in the simple
case of half a mirror going missing.

Jason