Hi all,
this is not a bug, this is a tricky situation due to a few bad choices
on my part.
I am using a 8 port Sata controller (MV88SX5081 8-port SATA I PCI-X
Controller) with the 2.6.12.6 kernel.
I am using the 3rd party sata_mv drivers as the sata_mv drivers included
in the 2.6.15 kernel are not stable enough yet - This problem will go
away when these drivers become stable. The 3rd party driver limits me to
2.6.12.6.
The 3rd party driver can only be built as a module, and not directly
into the kernel - just making that clear before people suggest building
it into the kernel.
I have 6 Sata disks hanging off this controller that I am trying to put
into a raid 5 configurations, which can then be included into LVM2.
I am using mdadm to try to migrate away from raidtools.
The problem I have is that the kernel boots sees the sata raid boot
disks (on a diffect controller) and raid starts them - sysfs sees the
raid devices as block devices and advertises them to udev - which then
creates the /dev/md* entried (1 - 5) for the root disks, the file system
is mounted and the init scripts run - which then loads the 3rd party
module for the sata controller - which then makes the 6 sata disks
visable, but becase the kernel was not aware of these disks at boot/raid
time it does not start the raid array - which does not allow /dev/md6 to
be created.
I then have to manuall create /dev/md6 - but even then my attempt to
start the existing raid device fails (I believe this is because the
kernel is not aware of these disks as raid devices). I can however
recreate the raid device (mdadm --create) but this obviously wipes all
the data - but it does however prove the the /dev/md6 device is
functioning correctly.
Any advice on a process to get around this poor loop would be most
appriciated, I have tested against the 2.6.15-rc2 kernel using the
inbuild drivers and this problem goes away, /dev/md6 is created and the
raid5 device is started and running well. The machine just becomes
unstable when accessing the raid5 device using the driver from 2.6.15-rc2.
Many thanks,
Matt
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