Hi, I am running debian sarge linux kernel 2.6.8. I boot from a sata drive /dev/sda, and set up a raid5 on /dev/hda, /dev/hdc, /dev/hde, /dev/hdg. I turned off udev, and created /dev/md0 and I loaded raid5 module into initrd.img. I set up a raid5 to start up at boot by configuring raidtools2 debian package which runs "raid2" script during /etc/rcS.d. Weird is, raid5 does not start on /dev/md0 during bootup ( i enclose the dmesg error log which says that there are errors trying) but after bootup when I do raidstart /dev/md0 after boot, it starts like a charm... Any ideas what causes the errors in the log???? Here is the output of dmesg during boot. RAMDISK: Loading 4360 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done. VFS: Mounted root (cramfs filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 204k freed raid5: automatically using best checksumming function: pIII_sse pIII_sse : 5512.000 MB/sec raid5: using function: pIII_sse (5512.000 MB/sec) md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27 md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4 md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3 vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6 NET: Registered protocol family 1 SCSI subsystem initialized libata version 1.02 loaded. sata_via version 0.20 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:0f.0[B] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10 sata_via(0000:00:0f.0): routed to hard irq line 10 ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE800 ctl 0xE402 bmdma 0xD400 irq 10 ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE000 ctl 0xD802 bmdma 0xD408 irq 10 ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:5b01 84:4003 85:3469 86:1801 87:4003 88:407f ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 78165360 sectors: ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133 scsi0 : sata_via ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000) ... ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx hda: WDC WD2500JB-00GVA0, ATA DISK drive hdc: WDC WD2500JB-00GVA0, ATA DISK drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 Capability LSM initialized md: raidstart(pid 526) used deprecated START_ARRAY ioctl. This will not be supported beyond 2.6 hda: max request size: 1024KiB hda: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 hdc: max request size: 1024KiB hdc: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63 /dev/ide/host1/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 md: could not lock unknown-block(33,1). md: could not import unknown-block(33,1), trying to run array nevertheless. md: could not lock unknown-block(34,1). md: could not import unknown-block(34,1), trying to run array nevertheless. md: autorun ... md: considering hdc1 ... md: adding hdc1 ... md: adding hda1 ... md: created md0 md: bind<hda1> md: bind<hdc1> md: running: <hdc1><hda1> raid5: device hdc1 operational as raid disk 1 raid5: device hda1 operational as raid disk 0 raid5: not enough operational devices for md0 (2/4 failed) RAID5 conf printout: --- rd:4 wd:2 fd:2 disk 0, o:1, dev:hda1 disk 1, o:1, dev:hdc1 raid5: failed to run raid set md0 md: pers->run() failed ... md :do_md_run() returned -22 md: md0 stopped. md: unbind<hdc1> md: export_rdev(hdc1) here is the /etc/raidtab mlaks@A1:~$ cat /etc/raidtab raiddev /dev/md0 raid-level 5 nr-raid-disks 4 nr-spare-disks 0 persistent-superblock 1 parity-algorithm left-symmetric chunk-size 32 device /dev/hda1 raid-disk 0 device /dev/hdc1 raid-disk 1 device /dev/hde1 raid-disk 2 device /dev/hdg1 raid-disk 3 Notice the errors during attempt to start /dev/md0 moreover, once i run raidstart /dev/md0 i get the following in dmesg: md: raidstart(pid 3161) used deprecated START_ARRAY ioctl. This will not be supported beyond 2.6 md: autorun ... md: considering hdg1 ... md: adding hdg1 ... md: adding hde1 ... md: adding hdc1 ... md: adding hda1 ... md: created md0 md: bind<hda1> md: bind<hdc1> md: bind<hde1> md: bind<hdg1> md: running: <hdg1><hde1><hdc1><hda1> raid5: device hdg1 operational as raid disk 3 raid5: device hde1 operational as raid disk 2 raid5: device hdc1 operational as raid disk 1 raid5: device hda1 operational as raid disk 0 raid5: allocated 4201kB for md0 raid5: raid level 5 set md0 active with 4 out of 4 devices, algorithm 2 RAID5 conf printout: --- rd:4 wd:4 fd:0 disk 0, o:1, dev:hda1 disk 1, o:1, dev:hdc1 disk 2, o:1, dev:hde1 disk 3, o:1, dev:hdg1 md: ... autorun DONE. kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3 FS on md0, internal journal EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Now it mounts normally. Any idea what is wrong here??? Thanks Mitchell Laks - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html