Hi Neil, it looks like we are hitting an issue with this patch. Kernel is stock ubuntu-precise (3.2.0-23 36), mdadm is v3.2.3. (We are aware that this version of mdadm has an issue of unaligned writes, so we backported the fix to it into this version). We are testing the following simple scenario: # 2-way raid1 with a missing drive # a fresh drive (no superblock) is added (not re-added) to the raid, and the raid happily starts rebuilding it # at some point in time, this drive fails, so rebuild aborts, drive is kicked out. # later the drive recovers and "mdadm remove & re-add" is attempted # re-add fails Some debugging suggests the following: - The superblock of the drive to be re-added looks like this: Avail Dev Size : 10483712 (5.00 GiB 5.37 GB) Array Size : 10483688 (5.00 GiB 5.37 GB) Used Dev Size : 10483688 (5.00 GiB 5.37 GB) Data Offset : 2048 sectors Super Offset : 8 sectors Recovery Offset : 100096 sectors State : clean Resync Offset : N/A sectors Device UUID : d9114d02:76153894:87aaf09d:c55da9be Internal Bitmap : 8 sectors from superblock Update Time : Wed Jun 6 18:36:55 2012 Checksum : 94468c9d - correct Events : 192 Device Role : Active device 1 Array State : AA ('A' == active, '.' == missing) So the drive has a valid recovery offset (MD_FEATURE_RECOVERY_OFFSET set) and a valid role. - The "re-add" path of mdadm performs calls getinfo_super1(), which performs: role = __le16_to_cpu(sb->dev_roles[__le32_to_cpu(sb->dev_number)]); ... info->disk.state = 6; /* active and in sync */ info->disk.raid_disk = role; So at this point, MD_DISK_ACTIVE and MD_DISK_SYNC are set. - mdadm issues ADD_NEW_DISK, which arrives to add_new_disk() in the kernel - the kernel performs: if (!mddev->persistent) { ... // not relevant to our case } else super_types[mddev->major_version]. validate_super(mddev, rdev); - validate_super() performs: if ((le32_to_cpu(sb->feature_map) & MD_FEATURE_RECOVERY_OFFSET)) rdev->recovery_offset = le64_to_cpu(sb->recovery_offset); else set_bit(In_sync, &rdev->flags); rdev->raid_disk = role; So In_sync flag is not set, because we have a recovery offset. - Then the code introduced by the patch does: if ((info->state & (1<<MD_DISK_SYNC)) && (!test_bit(In_sync, &rdev->flags) || rdev->raid_disk != info->raid_disk)) { /* This was a hot-add request, but events doesn't * match, so reject it. */ export_rdev(rdev); return -EINVAL; } So the first part of "OR" succeeds and we abort. An observation: this problem only happens with a fresh drive apparently. If drive that was already In_sync fails and then is re-added, kernel does not update its superblock until recovery completes. So its superblock has no valid recovery_offset, and this problem doesn't happen. The code that skips updating the superblock was added as part of this email thread: http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg36275.html. However, I did not dig deeper why the superblock gets updated in my case. But the scenario above repros easily. Q1: Can you confirm that my analysis is correct? Q2: Is this an expected behavior? I would assume that no, because the same case for a failed drive (not a fresh drive) works fine Q3: How would you recommend to handle this? Thanks! Alex. -- 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