From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christopher White Subject: mdadm does not create partition devices whatsoever, "partitionable" functionality broken Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 17:13:07 +0200 Message-ID: <4DCD4A83.8060202@pulseforce.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Greetings. I have spent TEN hours trying everything other than regressing to a REALLY old version. I started out on 3.1.4 and have also tried manually upgrading to 3.2.1, but the bug still exists. Somewhere along the way, the "auto" partitionable flag has broken. sudo mdadm --create --level=raid5 --auto=part2 /dev/md1 --metadata=1.2 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 This only creates /dev/md1. It is of course possible to create one big partition as /dev/md1p1 with any partitioning program, but FORGET about trying to create /dev/md1p2. The problem is that the RAID array is NOT created in partitionable mode, and only supports one large partition, despite ALL attempts at EVERY format of the --auto option, you name it, -a part2, --auto=mdp2, --auto=part2, --auto=p2, --auto=mdp, --auto=part, --auto=p, --auto=p4, you name it and I've tried it! My guess is the functionality of creating partitionable arrays literally DID break somewhere prior to/at version 3.1.4 which is the earliest version I tried. I'm giving up and creating physical n-1 sized partitions on the source disks and creating two RAID 5 arrays from those partitions instead, but decided I really MUST report this bug so that other people don't bang their head against the wall for ten hours of their life as well. ;-) Christopher