Sorry, I wasn't paying close enough attention and missed the obvious. ..... On Thursday October 18, snitzer@xxxxxxxxx wrote: > On 10/18/07, Neil Brown <neilb@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Wednesday October 17, snitzer@xxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > mdadm 2.4.1 through 2.5.6 works. mdadm-2.6's "Improve allocation and > > > use of space for bitmaps in version1 metadata" > > > (199171a297a87d7696b6b8c07ee520363f4603c1) would seem like the > > > offending change. Using 1.2 metdata works. > > > > > > I get the following using the tip of the mdadm git repo or any other > > > version of mdadm 2.6.x: > > > > > > # mdadm --create /dev/md2 --run -l 1 --metadata=1.0 --bitmap=internal > > > -n 2 /dev/sdf --write-mostly /dev/nbd2 > > > mdadm: /dev/sdf appears to be part of a raid array: > > > level=raid1 devices=2 ctime=Wed Oct 17 10:17:31 2007 > > > mdadm: /dev/nbd2 appears to be part of a raid array: > > > level=raid1 devices=2 ctime=Wed Oct 17 10:17:31 2007 > > > mdadm: RUN_ARRAY failed: Input/output error ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This means there was an IO error. i.e. there is a block on the device that cannot be read from. It worked with earlier version of mdadm because they used a much smaller bitmap. With the patch you mention in place, mdadm tries harder to find a good location and good size for a bitmap and to make sure that space is available. The important fact is that the bitmap ends up at a different location. You have a bad block at that location, it would seem. I would have expected an error in the kernel logs about the read error though - that is strange. What do mdadm -E and mdadm -X on each device say? > > > mdadm: stopped /dev/md2 > > > > > > kernel log shows: > > > md2: bitmap initialized from disk: read 22/22 pages, set 715290 bits, status: 0 > > > created bitmap (350 pages) for device md2 > > > md2: failed to create bitmap (-5) > > > > Could you please tell me the exact size of your device? Then should > > be able to reproduce it and test a fix. > > > > (It works for a 734003201K device). > > 732456960K, it is fairly surprising that such a relatively small > difference in size would prevent it from working... There was a case once where the calculation was wrong, and rounding sometimes left enough space and sometimes didn't. That is why I wanted to know the exact size. I turns out it wasn't relevant in this case. NeilBrown - 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