Hi guys, I'm new to RAID although I've had a server running raid5 for a while. It was delivered preinstalled like this and I never really wondered how to monitor and maintain it. This quick introduction just to let you understand why I'm such an idiot asking such a silly question. Now what happened? I have a server with 4 disks and raid5 configured. /dev/md10 is made of sda10 , sdb10 , sdc10 and sdd10 . Unfortunately, /dev/sdd died, the server crashed, etc. After restart, md10 did not rebuilt. I understood sdd was dead and did not try to force rebuild or even touch the existing system. First thing I did is ddrescue the remaining partitions sd[abc]10 . ddrescue did not stumble into any read error so I assume all remaining partitions are perfectly safe. Then I examined the partitions with : ================================================================================ # mdadm --examine /dev/loop[012] /dev/loop0: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 9d37bc89:711887ae:a4d2adc2:26fd5302 Creation Time : Wed Jan 25 09:08:11 2012 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 1926247296 (1837.01 GiB 1972.48 GB) Array Size : 5778741888 (5511.04 GiB 5917.43 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 10 Update Time : Mon Sep 5 23:29:23 2016 State : clean Active Devices : 3 Working Devices : 3 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 9d0ce26d - correct Events : 81589 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 10 0 active sync 0 0 8 10 0 active sync 1 1 8 26 1 active sync 2 2 8 42 2 active sync 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed /dev/loop1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 9d37bc89:711887ae:a4d2adc2:26fd5302 Creation Time : Wed Jan 25 09:08:11 2012 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 1926247296 (1837.01 GiB 1972.48 GB) Array Size : 5778741888 (5511.04 GiB 5917.43 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 10 Update Time : Mon Sep 5 23:36:23 2016 State : clean Active Devices : 1 Working Devices : 1 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 9d0ce487 - correct Events : 81626 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 1 8 26 1 active sync 0 0 0 0 0 removed 1 1 8 26 1 active sync 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed /dev/loop2: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 9d37bc89:711887ae:a4d2adc2:26fd5302 Creation Time : Wed Jan 25 09:08:11 2012 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 1926247296 (1837.01 GiB 1972.48 GB) Array Size : 5778741888 (5511.04 GiB 5917.43 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 10 Update Time : Mon Sep 5 23:29:23 2016 State : clean Active Devices : 3 Working Devices : 3 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 9d0ce291 - correct Events : 81589 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 2 8 42 2 active sync 0 0 8 10 0 active sync 1 1 8 26 1 active sync 2 2 8 42 2 active sync 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed ================================================================================ There comes my mistake: I ran the --create command instead of --assemble : ================================================================================ # mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1 --raid-devices=4 --level=raid5 --run --readonly /dev/loop0 /dev/loop1 /dev/loop2 missing mdadm: layout defaults to left-symmetric mdadm: layout defaults to left-symmetric mdadm: chunk size defaults to 512K mdadm: /dev/loop0 appears to contain an ext2fs file system size=5778741888K mtime=Sat Sep 3 11:00:22 2016 mdadm: /dev/loop0 appears to be part of a raid array: level=raid5 devices=4 ctime=Wed Jan 25 09:08:11 2012 mdadm: /dev/loop1 appears to be part of a raid array: level=raid5 devices=4 ctime=Wed Jan 25 09:08:11 2012 mdadm: /dev/loop2 appears to be part of a raid array: level=raid5 devices=4 ctime=Wed Jan 25 09:08:11 2012 mdadm: size set to 1926115840K mdadm: automatically enabling write-intent bitmap on large array mdadm: creation continuing despite oddities due to --run mdadm: Defaulting to version 1.2 metadata mdadm: array /dev/md1 started. ================================================================================ After that, mounting failed: ================================================================================ # mount /dev/md1 /raid/ mount: /dev/md1 is write-protected, mounting read-only mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/md1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so. ================================================================================ Here's more info about the new raid to be compared with the initial one: ================================================================================ # mdadm --examine /dev/loop[012] /dev/loop0: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 1.2 Feature Map : 0x1 Array UUID : aa56f42f:bb95fbde:11ce620e:878b2b1c Name : tucana.caoba.fr:1 (local to host tucana.caoba.fr) Creation Time : Mon Sep 19 23:17:04 2016 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 4 Avail Dev Size : 3852232703 (1836.89 GiB 1972.34 GB) Array Size : 5778347520 (5510.66 GiB 5917.03 GB) Used Dev Size : 3852231680 (1836.89 GiB 1972.34 GB) Data Offset : 262144 sectors Super Offset : 8 sectors Unused Space : before=262056 sectors, after=1023 sectors State : clean Device UUID : b4622e59:f0735f5a:825086d1:57f89efb Internal Bitmap : 8 sectors from superblock Update Time : Mon Sep 19 23:17:04 2016 Bad Block Log : 512 entries available at offset 72 sectors Checksum : 3ec8dda7 - correct Events : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 512K Device Role : Active device 0 Array State : AAA. ('A' == active, '.' == missing, 'R' == replacing) /dev/loop1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 1.2 Feature Map : 0x1 Array UUID : aa56f42f:bb95fbde:11ce620e:878b2b1c Name : tucana.caoba.fr:1 (local to host tucana.caoba.fr) Creation Time : Mon Sep 19 23:17:04 2016 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 4 Avail Dev Size : 3852232703 (1836.89 GiB 1972.34 GB) Array Size : 5778347520 (5510.66 GiB 5917.03 GB) Used Dev Size : 3852231680 (1836.89 GiB 1972.34 GB) Data Offset : 262144 sectors Super Offset : 8 sectors Unused Space : before=262056 sectors, after=1023 sectors State : clean Device UUID : 9d42153b:4173aeea:51f41ebc:3789f98a Internal Bitmap : 8 sectors from superblock Update Time : Mon Sep 19 23:17:04 2016 Bad Block Log : 512 entries available at offset 72 sectors Checksum : 2af1f191 - correct Events : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 512K Device Role : Active device 1 Array State : AAA. ('A' == active, '.' == missing, 'R' == replacing) /dev/loop2: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 1.2 Feature Map : 0x1 Array UUID : aa56f42f:bb95fbde:11ce620e:878b2b1c Name : tucana.caoba.fr:1 (local to host tucana.caoba.fr) Creation Time : Mon Sep 19 23:17:04 2016 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 4 Avail Dev Size : 3852232703 (1836.89 GiB 1972.34 GB) Array Size : 5778347520 (5510.66 GiB 5917.03 GB) Used Dev Size : 3852231680 (1836.89 GiB 1972.34 GB) Data Offset : 262144 sectors Super Offset : 8 sectors Unused Space : before=262056 sectors, after=1023 sectors State : clean Device UUID : ada52b0e:f2c4a680:ece59800:6425a9b2 Internal Bitmap : 8 sectors from superblock Update Time : Mon Sep 19 23:17:04 2016 Bad Block Log : 512 entries available at offset 72 sectors Checksum : 2a341a - correct Events : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 512K Device Role : Active device 2 Array State : AAA. ('A' == active, '.' == missing, 'R' == replacing) ================================================================================ With the help of the initial mdadm --examine , is it possible to recreate my raid in a way that I can read data out of it? I also posted the question here: http://www.unix.com/unix-for-advanced-and-expert-users/268771-how-fix-mistake-raid-mdadm-create-instead-assemble-post302983179.html#post302983179 Regards ------------------------- Santiago DIEZ CAOBA Conseil Paris, France -- 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