The question may seem strange but here's the problem I'm trying to solve. I have setup all the servers in my environment to PXE boot and nfs mount an older root filesystem that is a bit aged and predates udev and sysfs. It just has the /dev/ device tree. This worked well for installing proprietary PCI highpoint 1720 raid drivers that aren't included in the kernel. Then I would write my OS images to the drives after installing the raid driver. However, now my latest hardware comes with the Intel IMSM and I don't need to use the pci raid anymore if I can get this on-board imsm raid to work. I built the latest mdadm (3.2.5) and added it to my root filesystem. The mdadm --examine /dev/sda seems to see that the drives are configured but mdadm create fails and the mdadm --assemble --scan does nothing. I did configure the RAID1 array in the bios. I'm currently using an older 2.6.30 kernel, but should be new enough for imsm via mdadm. If mdadm requires udev and sysfs info then I'll have to figure out how to include that into my root filesystem. -bash-3.1# uname -r 2.6.30 -bash-3.1# mdadm -V mdadm - v3.2.5 - 18th May 2012 -bash-3.1# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [raid0] [raid1] [raid10] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] unused devices: <none> -bash-3.1# mdadm -E /dev/sda mdadm: /dev/sda is not attached to Intel(R) RAID controller. mdadm: /dev/sda is not attached to Intel(R) RAID controller. /dev/sda: Magic : Intel Raid ISM Cfg Sig. Version : 1.1.00 Orig Family : 41dddea6 Family : 41dddea6 Generation : 00000035 Attributes : All supported UUID : 64fabbb6:c0dfc0df:dc004a9e:620cffc5 Checksum : 242ff277 correct MPB Sectors : 1 Disks : 2 RAID Devices : 1 Disk00 Serial : Z2AFVZJZ State : active Id : 00020000 Usable Size : 625137928 (298.09 GiB 320.07 GB) [Volume0]: UUID : 83543199:fdb1493f:0f2af5ef:e2287504 RAID Level : 1 Members : 2 Slots : [UU] Failed disk : none This Slot : 0 Array Size : 625137664 (298.09 GiB 320.07 GB) Per Dev Size : 625137928 (298.09 GiB 320.07 GB) Sector Offset : 0 Num Stripes : 2441944 Chunk Size : 64 KiB Reserved : 0 Migrate State : idle Map State : normal Dirty State : clean Disk01 Serial : Z2AFVZN8 State : active Id : 00030000 Usable Size : 625137928 (298.09 GiB 320.07 GB) -bash-3.1# mdadm --assemble --scan mdadm main: failed to get exclusive lock on mapfile mdadm: No arrays found in config file or automatically -bash-3.1# mdadm --create /dev/md/imsm -e imsm -n 2 /dev/sda /dev/sdb mdadm: /dev/sda is not attached to Intel(R) RAID controller. mdadm: /dev/sda is not suitable for this array. mdadm: /dev/sdb is not attached to Intel(R) RAID controller. mdadm: /dev/sdb is not suitable for this array. Thanks for any help you can provide. -Scott -- 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