On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 08:57:03AM -0500, sylarrrrrrr@aim.com wrote:

OK So this is the mdadm mailing list, and the /dev/mapper is irrelevant 
here, right? So ...

How do I load my existing raid arrays with mdadm?

first make sure they have not been claimed by dmraid.
issuing "dmraid -an" should suffice
then just run "mdadm -As".
looking at /proc/mdstat you should see a container device (or array
using windows driver terminology) and the actual
raid volume.
under /dev/md you should also find meaningful device names and device
file for the partitions contained in the volume.

<snip>

PS. I am not next to that machine right now, but I have 3 raid devices on 
it and in the /dev/mapper there were about 6 or 8 devices some of which had 
similar names and consecutive numbers e.g. xxxxxxxxxxxxx_System1 
xxxxxxxxxxxxx_System2 xxxxxxxxxxxxx_System3 while my partition on one of 
the raid devices was called System and was raid 1 of two disks.

please quote either above or below, it is a pain to read if you quote in
the middle.
That said, you use the term 'device' above with two differemt meanings,
and i am not quite sure of what you intend.
please elaborate on "I have 3 raid devices"
- 3 hard disks in the container (array)
- a container with three volumes

then you probably mix partition and volume
xxxxxxxxxxxxx_System1 is the first partition on volume System of Array
xxxxxxxxxxxxx (unfortunately arrays dont have meaningful names)
xxxxxxxxxxxxx_System2 is the second partition ....
and so on


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