On Mon Dec 21, 2009 at 03:41:33AM +0000, Kristleifur Daðason wrote:

Hi all,

I wish to convert my 3-drive RAID-5 array to a 6-drive RAID-6. I'm on
Linux 2.6.32.2 and have mdadm version 3.1.1 with the 32-bit-array-size
patch from here: http://osdir.com/ml/linux-raid/2009-11/msg00534.html

I have three live drives and three spares added to the array. When I
initialize the command, mdadm does the initial checks and aborts with
a "cannot set device shape" without doing anything to the array.

$ mdadm --grow /dev/md_d1 --level=6 --raid-devices=6
--backup-file=/root/backup.md1_to_r6
mdadm: metadata format 1.10 unknown, ignored.
mdadm: metadata format 1.10 unknown, ignored.
mdadm level of /dev/md_d1 changed to raid6
mdadm: Need to backup 1024K of critical section..
mdadm: Cannot set device shape for /dev/md_d1
mdadm: aborting level change

I don't think you can grow and reshape simultaneously.  I think you'll
need to do this as two operations - either grow to a 5 disk RAID5 then
reshape to a 6 disk RAID6, or reshape to a 4 disk RAID6 then grow.

Cheers,
    Robin
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