Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 253837
md root boots fail without /etc/mdadm.conf
Last modified: 2008-06-16 22:13:02 EDT
The current versions of mkinitrd assemble root md arrays using: mdadm -As --auto=yes --run /dev/md0 This command requires a valid /etc/mdadm.conf or /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf file. mkinitrd copies over any /etc/mdadm.conf to the initrd, but ignores any /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf file. As a result, systems that rely on /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf will not boot. SOLUTION: mkinitrd should copy over /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf from the rootfs to initrd. Furthermore, systems that lack any mdadm.conf file will not boot (they produce "mdadm: /dev/md0 not identified in config file." errors). These systems were able to boot under the previous versions of mkinitrd that used the nash built-in raidautorun (providing that they had autodetectable arrays). POSSIBLE SOLUTION 1: Use "mdadm --auto-detect" in the init file when mkinitrd can not find any mdadm.conf. POSSIBLE SOLUTION 2: Use "mdadm -A mddevice component-devices" in the init file when mkinitrd can not find any mdadm.conf. POSSIBLE SOLUTION 3: Create a suitable mdadm.conf on the initrd so that "mdadm -As" will work (possibly copying this mdadm.conf onto the rootfs at the same time). I think that SOLUTION 3 is probably the best bet. Various possible mdadm.conf files should work, but an empty one should suffice.
After a bit of reboot testing, it seems that an empty /etc/mdadm.conf is not enough. The minimal /etc/mdadm.conf must contain one ARRAY line giving the component devices. A suitable file might be generated for the ${dev} array using: awk '/'${dev}'/ { printf "%s","ARRAY /dev/'${dev}' devices="; for (i=5; $i; i++) printf "%s%s","/dev/"gensub("\\[.*\\]","","",$i),$(i+1) ? "," : "\n"; }' /proc/mdstat > /etc/mdadm.conf Of course, a suitable /etc/mdadm.conf should be in place on systems that have one created by anaconda, but it is unwise to rely on their existence within mkinitrd as a system that has lost its /etc/mdadm.conf might become unbootable.
A better way to generate the appropriate /etc/mdadm.conf would be to use: mdadm -Q --detail --brief ${dev} > $MNTIMAGE/etc/mdadm.conf
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