Folks, I had two drives fails on a 13 drive RAID5 array with bad-blocks (confirmed this with external disk scan). I replaced and hot-added new drives back into array. Resync completed without incident. I moved the machine back into production and after reboot, the two new drives get kicked out of array for being non-fresh. Everything I try results in these two drives always getting kicked out. Here's what I tried. searched and read for at least 10 hours for info on kicking "non-fresh" hot-adding then rebooting 5 times with same result using kernel 2.4.30, 2.6.11.8 and 2.6.16.8. (resync takes 4 hours to complete, so iterations take a while) mdadm version is v1.12 after the resync before the reboot, manual stopping and starting the array always in correct operation (no kicking of drives) My questions are 1. How does a drive become non-fresh? 2. Is the non-fresh status related to 'events'? 3. How can I determine that all the drives are fresh before a reboot? 4. 2.4.30 and 2.6.11.8 dmesg output mentions kicking non-fresh drives. 2.6.16.8 doesn't even consider my new drives, see "after reboot" below After a resync, how can I determine that all my drives are actually part of the array? mdadm -E /dev/sdX1 for each drive shows the same info. 5. From everything I've tried, the array looks fine before the reboot. But no matter what I've tried, the drives are kicked upon reboot. 6. /proc/mdstat reports "Personalities : [raid5] [raid4]", the array is raid5, where raid4 come from? Thanks for reading this and any suggestions you can offer. Craig -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Dr. Craig Hollabaugh, craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, 970 240 0509 Author of Embedded Linux: Hardware, Software and Interfacing www.embeddedlinuxinterfacing.com The two drives in question are sdj1 and sdk1. Here's output after the resync before the reboot root@vaughan[502]: cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid5] [raid4] md0 : active raid5 sdj1[12](S) sdk1[9] sda1[0] sdl1[11] hdc1[10] sdd1[8] sdh1[7] sdg1[6] sdf1[5] sde1[4] sdi1[3] sdc1[2] sdb1[1] 1289056384 blocks level 5, 128k chunk, algorithm 2 [12/12] [UUUUUUUUUUUU] unused devices: <none> root@vaughan[501]: mdadm -D /dev/md0 /dev/md0: Version : 00.90.03 Creation Time : Thu Jan 16 09:10:52 2003 Raid Level : raid5 Array Size : 1289056384 (1229.34 GiB 1319.99 GB) Device Size : 117186944 (111.76 GiB 120.00 GB) Raid Devices : 12 Total Devices : 13 Preferred Minor : 0 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Thu May 25 05:36:58 2006 State : clean Active Devices : 12 Working Devices : 13 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 1 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 128K UUID : 4d862825:91140f1a:eb97e7f2:9bfa2403 Events : 0.2681049 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 8 33 2 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 8 129 3 active sync /dev/sdi1 4 8 65 4 active sync /dev/sde1 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 6 8 97 6 active sync /dev/sdg1 7 8 113 7 active sync /dev/sdh1 8 8 49 8 active sync /dev/sdd1 9 8 161 9 active sync /dev/sdk1 10 22 1 10 active sync /dev/hdc1 11 8 177 11 active sync /dev/sdl1 12 8 145 - spare /dev/sdj1 root@vaughan[512]: mdadm -E /dev/sdj1 /dev/sdj1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.00 UUID : 4d862825:91140f1a:eb97e7f2:9bfa2403 Creation Time : Thu Jan 16 09:10:52 2003 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 12 Total Devices : 13 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Thu May 25 05:36:58 2006 State : clean Active Devices : 12 Working Devices : 13 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 9943fc98 - correct Events : 0.2681049 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 128K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 12 8 145 12 spare /dev/sdj1 0 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 2 8 33 2 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 3 8 129 3 active sync /dev/sdi1 4 4 8 65 4 active sync /dev/sde1 5 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 6 6 8 97 6 active sync /dev/sdg1 7 7 8 113 7 active sync /dev/sdh1 8 8 8 49 8 active sync /dev/sdd1 9 9 8 161 9 active sync /dev/sdk1 10 10 22 1 10 active sync /dev/hdc1 11 11 8 177 11 active sync /dev/sdl1 12 12 8 145 12 spare /dev/sdj1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now after reboot root@vaughan[542]: uname -a Linux vaughan 2.6.16.8 #1 Wed May 24 15:00:27 MDT 2006 i686 GNU/Linux >From dmesg md: Autodetecting RAID arrays. md: autorun ... md: considering sdl1 ... md: adding sdl1 ... md: adding sdi1 ... md: adding sdh1 ... md: adding sdg1 ... md: adding sdf1 ... md: adding sde1 ... md: adding sdd1 ... md: adding sdc1 ... md: adding sdb1 ... md: adding sda1 ... md: adding hdc1 ... md: created md0 The kernel didn't add sdj or sdk. root@vaughan[501]: cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid5] [raid4] md0 : active raid5 sdl1[11] sdi1[3] sdh1[7] sdg1[6] sdf1[5] sde1[4] sdd1[8] sdc1[2] sdb1[1] sda1[0] hdc1[10] 1289056384 blocks level 5, 128k chunk, algorithm 2 [12/11] [UUUUUUUUU_UU] unused devices: <none> root@vaughan[502]: mdadm -D /dev/md0 /dev/md0: Version : 00.90.03 Creation Time : Thu Jan 16 09:10:52 2003 Raid Level : raid5 Array Size : 1289056384 (1229.34 GiB 1319.99 GB) Device Size : 117186944 (111.76 GiB 120.00 GB) Raid Devices : 12 Total Devices : 11 Preferred Minor : 0 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Thu May 25 05:36:58 2006 State : clean, degraded Active Devices : 11 Working Devices : 11 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 128K UUID : 4d862825:91140f1a:eb97e7f2:9bfa2403 Events : 0.2681049 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 8 33 2 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 8 129 3 active sync /dev/sdi1 4 8 65 4 active sync /dev/sde1 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 6 8 97 6 active sync /dev/sdg1 7 8 113 7 active sync /dev/sdh1 8 8 49 8 active sync /dev/sdd1 9 0 0 - removed 10 22 1 10 active sync /dev/hdc1 11 8 177 11 active sync /dev/sdl1 root@vaughan[512]: mdadm -E /dev/sdj1 /dev/sdj1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.00 UUID : 4d862825:91140f1a:eb97e7f2:9bfa2403 Creation Time : Thu Jan 16 09:10:52 2003 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 12 Total Devices : 13 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Thu May 25 05:36:58 2006 State : clean Active Devices : 12 Working Devices : 13 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 9943fc98 - correct Events : 0.2681049 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 128K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 12 8 145 12 spare /dev/sdj1 0 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 2 8 33 2 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 3 8 129 3 active sync /dev/sdi1 4 4 8 65 4 active sync /dev/sde1 5 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 6 6 8 97 6 active sync /dev/sdg1 7 7 8 113 7 active sync /dev/sdh1 8 8 8 49 8 active sync /dev/sdd1 9 9 8 161 9 active sync /dev/sdk1 10 10 22 1 10 active sync /dev/hdc1 11 11 8 177 11 active sync /dev/sdl1 12 12 8 145 12 spare /dev/sdj1 - 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