From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bill Davidsen Subject: Re: unknown partition table starting with 2.6.28 Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:25:29 -0500 Message-ID: <4B6B6579.40900@tmr.com> References: <4B51010E.9090800@vorgon.com> <4B51B46A.4080302@anonymous.org.uk> <4B673DAE.3040806@tmr.com> <4B67FF12.5070004@anonymous.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4B67FF12.5070004@anonymous.org.uk> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: John Robinson Cc: Linux RAID List-Id: linux-raid.ids John Robinson wrote: > On 01/02/2010 20:46, Bill Davidsen wrote: >> John Robinson wrote: >>> On 15/01/2010 23:58, Timothy D. Lenz wrote: >>>> I am trying to update my kernel from 2.6.26.8 to the current .32. >>> [...] >>>> Starting with .28 I am getting an error about unknown partition >>>> table for all 3 md's. md0 is boot and main programs, md1 is swap, >>>> md2 is mostly recordings storage for vdr. All 3 are raid 1 and raid >>>> is built in. >>> >>> Your md devices aren't partitioned so you can quite safely ignore >>> the warning. See also >>> http://marc.info/?l=linux-raid&m=125797242110594&w=2 >> >> To clarify that a bit, the kernel can use several partition formats, >> and something in the partitions looks like a partition table but not >> a *valid* partition table. So the kernel warns that it doesn't >> recognize the table. >> >> I suspect that using a different superblock type would change >> (probably eliminate) this, putting the md information at the start of >> the partition, of in a bit or whatever makes the kernel happy. The >> kernel would make us happy if it checked for a valid md superblock at >> the *end* of the partition, but there may be reasons why that's >> undesirable. >> >> Finally, I'm less willing than John to say you can ignore it, any >> time something comes close enough to working (in an undesired way) to >> generate an error message, if there's a simple way to be sure the >> kernel doesn't try to use random data as a partition table, you might >> well want to take a step to prevent a problem now. >> >> I believe it arises out of all arrays being partitionable recently, >> again the details don't come to mid, I've been pretty head down on >> another project since November. > > I don't think this analysis is correct. Yes, the situation has arisen > out of all arrays - in fact all block devices - being partitionable, > but the warning's not because of something that looks like a dodgy > partition table, it is precisely what it says, a statement that the > device does not contain a valid partition table. I am essentially > repeating the contents of Doug Ledford's earlier post to this list, to > which I referred above. But the question is, *should* it contain a valid partition table, or even anything which looks enough like a partition table to have the kernel look at it hard enough to think it's invalid? I have several devices on one system which contain essentially random data, and I don't see this, so I assume that my data never looks enough like a partition table to trigger this. At least to 2.6.33-rc6, which I did boot. -- Bill Davidsen "We can't solve today's problems by using the same thinking we used in creating them." - Einstein