2.6.15-rc5-mm3 sata_mv raid5 array failure to start

Hello all,

I am still persisting with my quest for a usable sata_mv driver.

The 2.5.15-rc5-m3 kernel appear to have been good to me.

Before I attempt moving to later releases of the 2.6.15 tree I thought 
I'd get feedback from the people in the know

This is an intentional cross-post as I'm not %100 sure if the problems 
sits in the raid error or the actual libata/driver area (more probable)

I have 7 SATA disks hanging of an 8 port controller which uses the 
sata_mv driver.

I create a raid 5 array consisting of 6 disks (using 1 full disk 
partition) and 1 spare

The array builds fine - although it takes 300 minutes so its not a quick 
process to run through tests.


md6 : active raid5 sdh[5] sdi[6](S) sdg[4] sdf[3] sde[2] sdd[1] sdc[0]
      1225586560 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/6] [UUUUUU]


as you can see, all looking good. sdi is marked as the spare./dev/md6:
        Version : 00.90.03
  Creation Time : Sat Dec 31 16:23:11 2005
     Raid Level : raid5
     Array Size : 1225586560 (1168.81 GiB 1255.00 GB)
    Device Size : 245117312 (233.76 GiB 251.00 GB)
   Raid Devices : 6
  Total Devices : 7
Preferred Minor : 6
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Sat Dec 31 22:04:56 2005
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 6
Working Devices : 7
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 1

         Layout : left-symmetric
     Chunk Size : 64K

           UUID : f92fa512:1fe54278:d3ba820f:cecb842a
         Events : 0.2

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8       32        0      active sync   /dev/sdc
       1       8       48        1      active sync   /dev/sdd
       2       8       64        2      active sync   /dev/sde
       3       8       80        3      active sync   /dev/sdf
       4       8       96        4      active sync   /dev/sdg
       5       8      112        5      active sync   /dev/sdh

       6       8      128        -      spare   /dev/sdi




I've played around with this large md, using lvm2, and as a flat 
filesystem, it performs well, interacts well, seems solid and stable. 
I'm pretty pleased with it.

When I reboot however, the md6 device fails to start

when I look into this its because only 2 devices are showing as usable 
for the array, so not enough to start the raid 5 array.

However when I actually look all the devices are physically there and I 
can interact with them as seperate disks, fdisk them, format them etc etc.

On close inspection, it appears that although the devices are there, 
raid subsystem finds reasons not to use them. I've attatched the syslog 
so you can see for yourself as its quite a long post to put in the body 
of this message.

I understand why the array is not starting, however I don't understand 
why the disks are not forming into the raid array.

even now, I can't start the array manually, however, if I issue the 
create array command again now, it builds a perfect array and the loop 
starts again.

I've followed a lot of changed in the 2.6.15-rc7 branch, but I thought 
I'd get input before blindly upgrading.

Matt