From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sachin Garg Subject: Desperate: mdadm fails to assemble raid saying devices are busy. Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 10:32:05 -0400 Message-ID: <523DADE5.8050604@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: linux-raid List-Id: linux-raid.ids Hi, I am on Arch Linux. I have a 4 device RAID 5 of which 1 device is no longer working. I am unable to assemble the raid. The active devices are:/dev/sda2, /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc2 The errors I get are like: # mdadm -Avf /dev/md127 mdadm: looking for devices for /dev/md127 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-6 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-5 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-4 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-3 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-2 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-1 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/dm-0 mdadm: /dev/sdc2 is busy - skipping mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/sdc1 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/sdc mdadm: /dev/sdb1 is busy - skipping mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/sdb mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/sda3 mdadm: /dev/sda2 is busy - skipping mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/sda1 mdadm: no RAID superblock on /dev/sda I would like to know what is making these devices busy. I do not see any indication from lsof or from the device mapper that these devices are being used. I have even changed the initramfs and the fstab etc. to prevent this array from being started at boot time - still unable to assemble it. This array contains my /home and I do not know how to recover it. Help please ... Thanks, Sachin