Description of problem: Split off from 49973#c24. Should be applicable to F11 as well, that has the same version of dmraid. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 1.0.0.rc15 How reproducible: Always. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Attach two drives to an Adaptec SCSI controller that supports hardware RAID 2. Format both drives as hardware RAID devices, using the tools in Adaptec's SCSI BIOS. 3. Change your mind, after you discover that an old version of Fedora you were going to install, many years ago, did not support hardware raid back then (pre-dmraid). 4. Turn off RAID in Adaptec SCSI BIOS 5. Format both drives using Linux softraid. Install Fedora. 6. Years later, you're now running F10, and you want to upgrade to F11 7. Bug 499733 prevents you from upgrading to F11, the suggested workaround is to use dmraid -x or dmraid -r -E, first. Actual results: [root@commodore ~]# dmraid -r ERROR: asr: Invalid magic number in RAID table; saw 0x0, expected 0x900765C4 on /dev/sdb ERROR: asr: Invalid magic number in RAID table; saw 0x0, expected 0x900765C4 on /dev/sda no raid disks [root@commodore ~]# dmraid -x /dev/sdb ERROR: asr: Invalid magic number in RAID table; saw 0x0, expected 0x900765C4 on /dev/sdb ERROR: asr: Invalid magic number in RAID table; saw 0x0, expected 0x900765C4 on /dev/sda no raid disks and with names: "/dev/sdb" [root@commodore ~]# dmraid -r -E /dev/sdb ERROR: asr: Invalid magic number in RAID table; saw 0x0, expected 0x900765C4 on /dev/sdb no raid disks and with names: "/dev/sdb" Expected results: There should be a way for me to remove all traces of the aborted hardware RAID signatures, that have been lurking in the background, for all these years. Additional info:
This problem very much also affects users various BIOS fakeraid systems. If they have once enabled BIOS fakeraid and then decide to turn it off then there is often stale signatures left behind. Thankfully F12 again supports the nodmraid boot option to work around this, but would be nice to be able to fix the drives in a non-destructive manner without resorting to using hexedit to manually clear the RAID signature. dmraid-1.0.0.rc16-4.fc12 related note: That package version is not right. Should have been 1.0.0-0.4.rc16.fc12 as per https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:NamingGuidelines#Package_Version
problem confirmed. dmraid -rE only deletes valid RAID signatures, refusing to touch drives where it looks like there is a RAID signature but there is something wrong with it. The bad part is that F12 anaconda refuses to access drives having an invalid RAID signature, which means that one MUST use the nodmraid boot option or alternatively manually clear the RAID signature using dd or hexedit..
Heinz, This looks like it is a real issue for several people, also see: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=499733#c35 For example, it would be great if you can take a look at this when you have some time. Regards, Hans
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Confirmed in F12. Retargeting.
Hans, the above error indicates, that the asr metadata is bogus or it is a none supported format. In general, I'm not allowing to erase metadata areas not correctly discovered and supported. If there's no ATARAID BIOS at hand to erase such metadata, or the BIOS leaves stale metadata behind anyway, erasing the last MB of the device will erase any supported ATARAID/DDF1/... metadata signatures. Because this looks broader than just the dmraid unsupported formats: can we have a "WARNING: get rid of any RAID metadata" function in Anaconda/pyblock ?
In my case it was an NVidia BIOS raid signature that had been ignored for years. Installed using nodmraid boot option. Not sure why the signature got invalid. Imho allowing dmraid to erase these unknown signatures is pretty safe. At least much safer than giving the user instructions to try to do the same using dd. dmraid can easily verify that the signature is outside current partitions. But I fully agree on the second part. anaconda should be much better at informing when it sees disks which are supposed to be part of a unknown RAID set.
Heinz, Henrik, I agree with you anaconda should warn when it ignores a disk because of dmraid metadata. I've fixing this on my todo, this is tracked in bug 506861.
Well, I gave up and wrote a quick program to wipe the last megabyte's worth of blocks on my disks. That seemed to have worked, and dmraid isn't complaining any more. My normal levels of paranoia required me to sanity check the resulting byte offset after lseek64(fd, -1024 * 1024, SEEK_END) completed, and comparing that against the ending position of the last partition, as reported by fdisk. Only after satisfying myself that I end up seeking past the end of the last partition, did I let it rip, and it seemed to have worked. Still, that's not something that a non-technical user should be expected to do, in the same situation.