A long time ago I noticied pretty bad formatting of dmesg text in md array reconstruction output, but never bothered to ask. So here it goes. Example dmesg ("RAID conf printout" sections omitted): md: bind<sdb1> RAID1 conf printout: ..........<6>md: syncing RAID array md1 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 248896 blocks. md: bind<sdb2> RAID5 conf printout: ..........<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md1 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) md: bind<sdb3> RAID1 conf printout: ..........<6>md: delaying resync of md31 until md1 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ........<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md31 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) md: bind<sdb5> RAID5 conf printout: ........<6>md: delaying resync of md5 until md31 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..........<6>md: delaying resync of md31 until md1 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ......<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) md: bind<sdb6> RAID1 conf printout: ......<6>md: delaying resync of md61 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..........<6>md: delaying resync of md31 until md1 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ......<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ........<6>md: delaying resync of md5 until md31 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) md: bind<sdb7> RAID5 conf printout: ......<6>md: delaying resync of md7 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..........<6>md: delaying resync of md31 until md1 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ........<6>md: delaying resync of md5 until md31 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ......<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..<6>md: delaying resync of md61 until md7 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) md: md1: sync done. ..<6>md: delaying resync of md61 until md7 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ......<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ........<6>md: delaying resync of md5 until md31 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ...................<6>md: syncing RAID array md31 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 995904 blocks. ......<6>md: delaying resync of md7 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) RAID1 conf printout: md: md31: sync done. ....RAID1 conf printout: === here, the actual conf printout is below: ...<6>md: delaying resync of md7 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ...................<6>md: syncing RAID array md5 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 666560 blocks. ===== here: --- wd:2 rd:2 disk 0, wo:0, o:1, dev:sdb3 disk 1, wo:0, o:1, dev:sdd3 ..<6>md: delaying resync of md61 until md7 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ......<6>md: delaying resync of md2 until md5 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) md: md5: sync done. ........<6>md: delaying resync of md7 until md2 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..<6>md: delaying resync of md61 until md7 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..................<6>md: syncing RAID array md2 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 1252992 blocks. RAID5 conf printout: md: md2: sync done. ...<6>md: delaying resync of md61 until md7 has finished resync (they share one or more physical units) ..................<6>md: syncing RAID array md7 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 1999936 blocks. RAID5 conf printout: md: md7: sync done. ...................<6>md: syncing RAID array md61 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 30394880 blocks. RAID5 conf printout: md: md61: sync done. RAID1 conf printout: .... As you can see, there's a random number of dots before each "<6>md: syncing RAID array .." message. I guess this is sort of progress meter for other arrays being synchronized. Obviously, such a long lines (long in terms of *time* required to complete the line, not in terms of line length) should not be in dmesg in the first place. But the thing is: I've no idea where this dot is coming from... ;) Can we fix this umm.. misformatting please? ;) Thanks. /mjt - 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