Description of problem: Its possible to refer to RAID disks in fstab using their filesystem label. OK, there's not much benefit to doing this, but many customers simply seem to prefer using disk labels for everything (I teach RHCEs and notice this). Since rc.sysinit only looks for the raid device in /etc/fstab, RAID won't be started if the fstab is using a label to refer to the FS on the RAID disk. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 7.31.9.EL-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Create a RAID device. Make a labelled filesystem on it. 2.Add it to the fstab using its disk label 3.Reboot Actual results: RAID won't be started. Not too bad, but then fstab will be run, and may tell the user the user the filesystem is larger than the device - a fairly confusing error message. Expected results: Either deal with RAID filesystems using disk labels or produce a better error message. Additional info:
This problem is resolved in the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 4), with the added support for using mdadm to start arrays. Red Hat does not currently plan to provide a resolution for this in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update for currently deployed systems. With the goal of minimizing risk of change for deployed systems, and in response to customer and partner requirements, Red Hat takes a conservative approach when evaluating changes for inclusion in maintenance updates for currently deployed products. The primary objectives of update releases are to enable new hardware platform support and to resolve critical defects.