On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 06:28:21PM -0400, jeff wrote:

I am running mandrake 2006 linux.

s/mandrake/mandriva

uname -a reports
Linux dual_933 2.6.12-12mdksmp #1 SMP Fri Sep 9 17:43:23 CEST 2005 i686
Pentium III (Coppermine) unknown GNU/Linux

not strictly related to your problem, but you should really consider
applying updates from your distribution.

<snip>

When I rebooted, the reboot hung. I think for some reason it didn't
automatically start the md0 device, and as a result it couldn't mount
the /dev/md0 partition in my /etc/fstab. I went into single-user mode,
and commented out the /dev/md0 line in /etc/fsab, and I was able to
boot. Then I executed the mdadm --create line, uncommented /etc/fstab,
and I was able to access my data.

the command to activate an already existing raid set is "mdadm
--assemble", not "mdadm --create"

I was reading some documentation, and it said that you can use mdadm on
either partitions or on a device (as I did). When you have partitions, I
read that you should set the partition type to 0xFD so they get
autodetected during boot. I can't do this, as I don't have partitions.

this is junk documentation do not believe in it :=)

mandriva boot process uses mdadm to assemble raid devices at boot time
but you need to tell mdadm which arrays it should find at boot by
editing /etc/mdadm.conf, just run the following code snippet:

#!/bin/sh
grep -qs '/^[[:space:]]*DEVICE' /etc/mdadm.conf || \
        echo "DEVICE partitions" >> /etc/mdadm.conf

mdadm -Esc partitions | awk '
        /^ARRAY[[:space:]]/ {
                print $0, "auto=yes"
        }
' >> /etc/mdadm.conf


-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
        Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
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