what is /dev/.static/dev/md0 ???

what is /dev/.static/dev/md0 ???

[Mitchell Laks]

Hi,

Continuing with my saga with my 1/2 raid 1 pair devices....

I took  1/2 of a raid1 pair from one system and placed it on another system. 
Connected it up as the /dev/hdb location. It has a single partition /dev/hdb1 
which is of type linux autodetect fd and formated ext3.

Then I tried to assemble it 
mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/hdb1

and got error message
error opening /dev/md0  no such file or directory

(this is debian sid 
uname -a
2.6.10-1-k7-smp
mdadm -V
mdadm -v1.9.0
)

(who ??? knows what the hell is going on with udev here....)

then undetered i did 
mknod /dev/md0 b 9 0
mknod /dev/md1 b 9 1
 
then i did 
mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/hdg1

and got response 

mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 1 drive
need all 2 to start it
need to --run to insist

So of course i insisted and it started and it was accessible and mounted fine
as /dev/md0.

then i did same with another device for /dev/md1.

then i  wanted to make a mdadm.conf file to play with booting normally 

Machine:~# mdadm --detail --scan

ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 
UUID=86af4f07:91fe306c:d1cb5c86:e87dc7de
   devices=/dev/.static/dev/hdg1
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 
UUID=19def19e:3995fe1e:5470d62a:c44b069c
   devices=/dev/.static/dev/hdb1

My question:

what the heck is  
devices=/dev/.static/dev/hdb1

and why doesnt it say what i expect 
devices=/dev/hdb1 and
devices=/dev/hdg1

?????? thanks
Mitchell Laks

Re: what is /dev/.static/dev/md0 ???

[Bernd Schubert]

Hi Mitchell,


[...]

> (who ??? knows what the hell is going on with udev here....)
> 
[...]
> 
> My question:
> 
> what the heck is  
> devices=/dev/.static/dev/hdb1

/dev/.static should be bindmounted your old, pre udev/tmpfs mounted /dev
directory. AFAIK, udev takes it as sample directory to create the proper 
device names.
Don't ask me why udev sometimes works and sometimes not. After shortly
trying it last year on our sever systems, I quickly decided to better
not to use it there. On our diskless clients it is really neccessary, but
also has *sometimes* issues there, e.g. on about 5 of 45 clients
reboots, it forgets to create /dev/pts on those 5 clients.

Cheers,
	Bernd