Hi, sorry, but here's yet another guy asking for some help on fixing his RAID5. I have read the other threads, but please help me to make sure that I am doing the correct things. I have a RAID5 with 3 devices and a write intent bitmap, created with Ubuntu 11.10 (Kernel 3.0, mdadm 3.1) and I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 (Kernel 3.2, mdadm 3.2.3). No hardware failure happened. Since the first boot with the new system, all 3 devices are marked as spares and --assemble refuses to run the raid because of this: # mdadm --assemble -vv /dev/md0 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 mdadm: looking for devices for /dev/md0 mdadm: /dev/sdb1 is identified as a member of /dev/md0, slot -1. mdadm: /dev/sdc1 is identified as a member of /dev/md0, slot -1. mdadm: /dev/sdd1 is identified as a member of /dev/md0, slot -1. mdadm: added /dev/sdc1 to /dev/md0 as -1 mdadm: added /dev/sdd1 to /dev/md0 as -1 mdadm: added /dev/sdb1 to /dev/md0 as -1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 0 drives and 3 spares - not enough to start the array. # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : inactive sdc1[0](S) sdb1[1](S) sdd1[3](S) 5860537344 blocks super 1.2 # --examine /dev/sdb1 Magic : a92b4efc Version : 1.2 Feature Map : 0x0 Array UUID : c37dda6d:b10ef0c4:c304569f:1db0fd44 Name : server:0 (local to host server) Creation Time : Thu Jun 30 12:15:27 2011 Raid Level : -unknown- Raid Devices : 0 Avail Dev Size : 3907024896 (1863.01 GiB 2000.40 GB) Data Offset : 2048 sectors Super Offset : 8 sectors State : active Device UUID : 4635f495:15c062a3:33a2fe5c:2c4e0d6d Update Time : Sat May 5 13:06:49 2012 Checksum : d8fe5afe - correct Events : 1 Device Role : spare Array State : ('A' == active, '.' == missing) I did not write on the disks, and did not execute any other commands than --assemble, so from the other threads I guess that I can recreate my raid with the data? My questions: Do I need to upgrade mdadm, for example to avoid the bitmap problem? How I can I backup the superblocks before? (I'm not sure where they are on disk). Is the following command right: mdadm -C -e 1.2 -5 -n 3 --assume-clean \ -b /boot/md0_write_intent_map \ /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 Do I need to specify the chunk-size? If so, how can I find it out? I think I might have used a custom chunk size back then. -X on my bitmap says Chunksize is 2MB, is this the right chunk size? Is it a problem that there is a write intent map? -X says there are 1375 dirty chunks. Will mdadm be able to use this information, or are the dirty chunks just lost? Is the order of the devices on the --create command line important? I am not 100% sure about the original order. Am I correct that, if I have backuped the three superblocks, execute the command above and do not write on the created array, I am not in danger of risking anything? I could always just reset the superblocks and then I am exactly in the situation that I am now, so I have multiple tries, for example if chunk size or order are wrong? Or will mdadm do something else do my raid in the process? Should I take any other precautions except stopping my raid before shutting down? Thank you very much in advance for your help. Greetings, Philipp -- 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