Re: Any risk switching mdadm to static?

On 12/26/2012 02:28 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:

On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Phil Turmel [off-list ref] wrote:

[trim /]

quoted

I can't answer the question off the top, but I thought I'd point out
that you probably don't need static for use with an initramfs.  Because
I run stable amd64 on one of my gentoo servers, and don't have 'static'
set for mdadm.  I use dracut with mdraid and lvm use flags to build my
initramfs images.  Rootfs is in LVM which is on MD raid10.

OK, that's good to know. I'm not currently using dracut as I'd like to go
through the process once or twice by hand as I learn, and maybe I'm
overreacting to what I'm seeing here. It's my understanding that the
purpose of the static flag is to build into the mdadm binary any libraries
that would normally be loaded dynamically. Is that correct?

Yes.

c2stable ~ # ldd /sbin/mdadm
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff735e3000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f81a31e6000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f81a3591000)
c2stable ~ #

Mine is effective identical (slight offset differences, as expected for
custom-compiled systems).  Dracut put these libraries in my initramfs.

So the above is for NOT static case. My concern is about
whether I have to put these libraries in my initramfs image
by hand, or said another way, if I build static then are these
libraries completely linked in and carried along with the
mdadm binary?

Yes, as you've since demonstrated.

quoted

From my understanding of how linking works, I'd say it *can't* hurt.

That's my general feeling also, but I'm just trying to be both extra
careful as well as learn something.

Thanks for the response!

You're welcome.

Phil