Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I have found a couple of bugs in the generic md code while working on RAID-6. The bugs aren't RAID-6 specific in any way; in fact, I've reproduced them on RAID-1 without any problems. a) mdadm -f seems to think it always fails. This is because the ioctl() to set a device faulty returns a positive nonzero value which mdadm doesn't expect: : raidtest 75 # strace ./mdadm -f /dev/md3 /dev/hde7 [... generic glibc crap removed ...] open("/dev/md3", O_RDWR) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(9, 3), ...}) = 0 ioctl(3, 0x800c0910, 0xbffff110) = 0 ioctl(3, 0x80480911, 0xbffff150) = 0 stat64("/dev/hde7", {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(33, 7), ...}) = 0 ioctl(3, 0x929, 0x2107) = 1 write(2, "mdadm: set device faulty failed "..., 56 mdadm: set device faulty failed for /dev/hde7: Success ) = 56 exit_group(1) = ? This is mostly an annoyance, although it causes scripts to fail. b) If an array is running in multi-disk-degraded mode (as can happen with RAID-1 or RAID-6), it is not merely possible but quite common for all the failed disks to be replaced at approximately the same time. However, md fails if failed disk #2 is inserted into the array before failed disk #1 has finished rebuilding, and will be stuck in degraded mode even though spare disks are available to it: mdstat during reconstruction: md3 : active raid1 hde7[6] hdd7[7] hda7[8] hdi7[2] hdk7[5] hdg7[3] 987840 blocks [6/3] [__UU_U] [==========>..........] recovery = 54.7% (541184/987840) finish=0.2min speed=36078K/sec after reconstruction: md3 : active raid1 hde7[6] hdd7[7] hda7[0] hdi7[2] hdk7[5] hdg7[3] 987840 blocks [6/4] [U_UU_U] When the second (or third, or...) disk is added, either the reconstruction needs to be restarted, *or* once reconstruction is finished the md core needs to check again to see if reconstruction is warranted, thus triggering multiple reconstruction passes. I think the latter is the preferred solution, on the theory that we want to get away from "the brink" where actual data loss occurs as quickly as possible. Actually getting the whole array into fully functional mode needs to happen, but is less of a priority. -hpa -- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! If you send me mail in HTML format I will assume it's spam. "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." Architectures needed: ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html