mdadm question

[Robert Minvielle <robert@lite3d.com>]

I am trying to setup a new raid array on a debian box, and I have not run into
this problem before. I could not find a mdadm list, so I will ask here. If this
is totally off topic, please disregard. 


I am attempting to setup a raid 6 array, but this is failing so I backing down
to a no-frills raid 5 array. The system is Debian5, stock kernel, stock everything. 
The mdadm is the stock debian, pulled with apt-get, version 2.6.7. 
The machine in question has one IDE drive for linux, and 45 SATA drives. Debian
sees all of the drives, and I have fdisked all of them with one partition of type
fd (Linux autodetect raid). fdisk -l /dev/sd[a-z] /dev/sdaa[a-s] shows them all
with no problems. 

The issue is that when I do a 

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=45 /dev/sd[a-z]1 /dev/sda[a-s]1

to create a raid array with no spares, all defaults, it returns with 

invalid number of raid devices. 

I have searched the web to no avail. --verbose does not increase verbosity. There
are no debug switches (that I know of) to mdadm. log files show nothing. Leaving off
--raid-devices=45 does nothing. Changing the number of devices just for fun does
nothing. (45,44,43,2,whatever). I am not sure if this is a problem with this version
in debian, the number of drives that I have, or the setup. I have done this before
(with a few less drives) with no problems. 

Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

Thanks.