Good morning Dave, On 03/07/2015 05:42 PM, Dave Stevens wrote: > Hello the raid list, > > I have inherited a server set up by people who are no longer around. It > worked fine until recently and then after a routine update refused to > boot. I've got the machine in my office and have been examining the > problem, or rather problems, I think there are two. Three, at least. > First, the bootable partition on /dev/sda1 won't successfully boot to a > xen kernel, kernel version is 2.6.18.something-xen. The intent is to > boot to a raid-10 array of four 750GB drives, each partitioned into a > small and a large partition as detailed below. > > Boot proceeds normally according to on-screen messages until this: > > md: md0: raid array is not clean -- starting background reconstruction > raid10: not enough operational mirrors for md0 > md: pers -> () failed Yup. Degraded to the point of not running. > Immediately after these messages is another stating that an attempt has > been made to kill init, kernel panic and reboot. No way to pivot to your root filesystem, so your initramfs gives up. Depending on the distro, it may be possible to pass a kernel command line option to drop into a repair shell at that point. > I've tried to give these messages verbatim but have no way (I think) to > reproduce them other than manually. Repair shell, if available. > So at first I looked around, read through the wiki and found advice to > NOT write anything to the array, which seems reasonable. I looked at a > live microknoppix distro called runtime live that gave me a command > shell to run the examine command with the output below: LiveCD boot is good, and the following report is very detailed, thanks: > /dev/sda2: > Magic : a92b4efc > Version : 0.90.00 > UUID : a9bde90a:77abaef6:6c6fe013:77d6cdaf > Creation Time : Sun Nov 29 15:33:50 2009 > Raid Level : raid10 > Used Dev Size : 732467456 (698.54 GiB 750.05 GB) > Array Size : 1464934912 (1397.07 GiB 1500.09 GB) > Raid Devices : 4 > Total Devices : 3 > Preferred Minor : 0 > > Update Time : Wed Feb 18 19:28:22 2015 > State : active > Active Devices : 2 > Working Devices : 2 > Failed Devices : 2 > Spare Devices : 0 > Checksum : 7c76593b - correct > Events : 32945477 This is important: ^^^^^^^^ > Layout : near=2 > Chunk Size : 256K > > Number Major Minor RaidDevice State > this 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 > > 0 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 > 1 1 0 0 1 active sync > 2 2 8 34 2 active sync /dev/sdc2 > 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed > /dev/sdb2: > Magic : a92b4efc > Version : 0.90.00 > UUID : a9bde90a:77abaef6:6c6fe013:77d6cdaf > Creation Time : Sun Nov 29 15:33:50 2009 > Raid Level : raid10 > Used Dev Size : 732467456 (698.54 GiB 750.05 GB) > Array Size : 1464934912 (1397.07 GiB 1500.09 GB) > Raid Devices : 4 > Total Devices : 3 > Preferred Minor : 0 > > Update Time : Sat Nov 22 13:18:12 2014 > State : clean > Active Devices : 3 > Working Devices : 3 > Failed Devices : 1 > Spare Devices : 0 > Checksum : 7d850ca4 - correct > Events : 32945477 With this: ^^^^^^^^ > Layout : near=2 > Chunk Size : 256K > > Number Major Minor RaidDevice State > this 1 8 18 1 active sync /dev/sdb2 > > 0 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 > 1 1 8 18 1 active sync /dev/sdb2 > 2 2 8 34 2 active sync /dev/sdc2 > 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed > /dev/sdc2: > Magic : a92b4efc > Version : 0.90.00 > UUID : a9bde90a:77abaef6:6c6fe013:77d6cdaf > Creation Time : Sun Nov 29 15:33:50 2009 > Raid Level : raid10 > Used Dev Size : 732467456 (698.54 GiB 750.05 GB) > Array Size : 1464934912 (1397.07 GiB 1500.09 GB) > Raid Devices : 4 > Total Devices : 3 > Preferred Minor : 0 > > Update Time : Wed Feb 18 19:30:13 2015 > State : active > Active Devices : 1 > Working Devices : 1 > Failed Devices : 2 > Spare Devices : 0 > Checksum : 7c7659de - correct > Events : 32945479 And this: ^^^^^^^^ > Layout : near=2 > Chunk Size : 256K > > Number Major Minor RaidDevice State > this 2 8 34 2 active sync /dev/sdc2 > > 0 0 0 0 0 removed > 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed > 2 2 8 34 2 active sync /dev/sdc2 > 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed > /dev/sdd2: > Magic : a92b4efc > Version : 0.90.00 > UUID : a9bde90a:77abaef6:6c6fe013:77d6cdaf > Creation Time : Sun Nov 29 15:33:50 2009 > Raid Level : raid10 > Used Dev Size : 732467456 (698.54 GiB 750.05 GB) > Array Size : 1464934912 (1397.07 GiB 1500.09 GB) > Raid Devices : 4 > Total Devices : 5 > Preferred Minor : 0 > > Update Time : Wed Sep 4 07:51:50 2013 > State : active > Active Devices : 4 > Working Devices : 5 > Failed Devices : 0 > Spare Devices : 1 > Checksum : 77c1a3a7 - correct > Events : 53 Whoa! ^^^^ > Layout : near=2 > Chunk Size : 256K > > Number Major Minor RaidDevice State > this 3 8 50 3 active sync /dev/sdd2 > > 0 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 > 1 1 8 18 1 active sync /dev/sdb2 > 2 2 8 34 2 active sync /dev/sdc2 > 3 3 8 50 3 active sync /dev/sdd2 > 4 4 8 66 4 spare /dev/sde2 > /dev/sde2: > Magic : a92b4efc > Version : 0.90.00 > UUID : a9bde90a:77abaef6:6c6fe013:77d6cdaf > Creation Time : Sun Nov 29 15:33:50 2009 > Raid Level : raid10 > Used Dev Size : 732467456 (698.54 GiB 750.05 GB) > Array Size : 1464934912 (1397.07 GiB 1500.09 GB) > Raid Devices : 4 > Total Devices : 5 > Preferred Minor : 0 > > Update Time : Sun Sep 8 13:25:42 2013 > State : clean > Active Devices : 4 > Working Devices : 4 > Failed Devices : 0 > Spare Devices : 0 > Checksum : 77c775be - correct > Events : 7934 And Whoa again! ^^^^^^ > Layout : near=2 > Chunk Size : 256K > > Number Major Minor RaidDevice State > this 3 8 66 3 active sync /dev/sde2 > > 0 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 > 1 1 8 18 1 active sync /dev/sdb2 > 2 2 8 34 2 active sync /dev/sdc2 > 3 3 8 66 3 active sync /dev/sde2 > > This makes sense to me as far as it goes but I don't see what to do > next. As I understand it the four partitions from sda2 to sdd2 would > form the array with sde as hot spare. It has been my assumption that if > a drive failed that sde would sync and take over. I don't know if this > is in fact the case and don't see a path forward. Of course the backups > are inadequate. Based on the events and update timestamps, sdd died sometime around Wed Sep 4 07:51:50 2013, at which point sde stepped in. It too failed shortly after ~ Sun Sep 8 13:25:42 2013. You then ran degraded for over a year until sdb also failed ~ Sat Nov 22 13:18:12 2014. You were then running doubly-degraded (luckily on non-adjacent members) until this Feb 14 when sda was booted out. Leaving only one running drive. { I wouldn't keep such people around, either. } Your best bet is to force assembly of the last two working drives to get the system running, then take an immediate backup of all critical files. Do the forced assembly with the livecd, then do a clean shutdown. You should then be able to boot the original OS and take your backup. Then you need to completely rebuild your system with proper log monitoring, array monitoring, and verification of your drives. Phil -- 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