Re: RAID showing all devices as spares after partial unplug

[Phil Turmel <philip@turmel.org>]

Hi Mike,

On 09/17/2011 11:59 PM, Mike Hartman wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 11:07 PM, Mike Hartman
> <mike@hartmanipulation.com> wrote:
>> Yikes. That's a pretty terrifying prospect.

*Don't do it!*

"mdadm --create" in these situations is an absolute last resort.

First, try --assemble --force.

If needed, check the archives for the environment variable setting that'll temporarily allow mdadm to ignore the event counts for more --assemble and --assemble --force tries.

(I can't remember the variable name off the top of my head.)

Only if all of the above fails do you fall back to "--create", and every single "--create" attempt *must* include "--assume-clean", or your data is in grave danger.

Based on the output of the one full mdadm -E report, your array was created with a recent version mdadm, so you shouldn't have trouble with data offsets.  Please post the full "mdadm -E" report for each drive if you want help putting together a --create command.

I'd also like to see the output of lsdrv[1], so there's a good record of drive serial numbers vs. device names.

HTH,

Phil

[1] http://github.com/pturmel/lsdrv