Trouble building a RAID 4 array with mdadm

Kevin O'Gorman kogorman at gmail.com
Sun Apr 2 21:00:31 UTC 2017


Never mind.  I think I'm having a mobo meltdown.  In any event, I'm seeing
random errors on most of my hard drives, and some of them caused the RAID
to go offline.

Clearly, I have to sort that out before I start blaming anything related to
RAID.

On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 9:13 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm on Xubuntu 16.04.2 LTS, using mdadm.  I've already built a RAID-1
> array and had some success with it.  I'm trying to build a RAID 5 array,
> and having troubles.
>
> I'm using the instructions I found on DigitalOcean (http://goo.gl/ZzwyxQ)
>
> I did the mdadm --create, thus:
> mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md3 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdd1
> /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1
> mdadm: layout defaults to left-symmetric
> mdadm: layout defaults to left-symmetric
> mdadm: chunk size defaults to 512K
> mdadm: size set to 3906885632K
> mdadm: automatically enabling write-intent bitmap on large array
> mdadm: Defaulting to version 1.2 metadata
> mdadm: array /dev/md3 started.
>
> and /proc/mdstat contained
> md3 : active raid5 sdf1[3] sde1[1] sdd1[0]
>       7813771264 <(781)%20377-1264> blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk,
> algorithm 2 [3/2] [UU_]
>       [>....................]  recovery =  0.1% (4734656/3906885632)
> finish=1030.1min speed=63128K/sec
>       bitmap: 0/30 pages [0KB], 65536KB chunk
>
> unused devices: <none>
>
> which indicates that adding the parity should take about 17 hours.
>
> About an hour later it said
>  md3 : active raid5 sdf1[3] sde1[1] sdd1[0]
>       7813771264 <(781)%20377-1264> blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk,
> algorithm 2 [3/2] [UU_]
>       [>....................]  recovery =  0.8% (33160860/3906885632)
> finish=346.9min speed=186077K/sec
>       bitmap: 0/30 pages [0KB], 65536KB chunk
>
> unused devices: <none>
>
> And I thought that was going awfully fast.  Now, less than 3 hours later,
> it's saying
> Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5]
> [raid4] [raid10]
> md3 : active raid5 sde1[1] sdd1[0]
>       7813771264 <(781)%20377-1264> blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk,
> algorithm 2 [3/2] [UU_]
>       bitmap: 2/30 pages [8KB], 65536KB chunk
>
> unused devices: <none>
>
> And you'd think that means the construction is done.  But wait a minute.
> It only shows 2 drives, and  lsblk(8) says /dev/sdf1 is not part of the
> array.
> NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
> sda           8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk
> ├─sda1        8:1    0     1M  0 part
> ├─sda2        8:2    0    32G  0 part  /
> ├─sda3        8:3    0    32G  0 part
> ├─sda4        8:4    0     1G  0 part
> ├─sda5        8:5    0    96G  0 part  /vhome
> ├─sda6        8:6    0    64G  0 part  /var/www
> ├─sda7        8:7    0    32G  0 part  /vhome/kevin/VM
> ├─sda8        8:8    0 190.1G  0 part  /vhome/kevin/Projects
> ├─sda9        8:9    0     2G  0 part  [SWAP]
> └─sda10       8:10   0   1.4T  0 part
> sdb           8:16   0 447.1G  0 disk
> ├─sdb1        8:17   0   100M  0 part
> ├─sdb2        8:18   0 446.6G  0 part
> └─sdb3        8:19   0   450M  0 part
> sdc           8:32   0   3.7T  0 disk
> ├─sdc1        8:33   0     1M  0 part
> ├─sdc2        8:34   0    32G  0 part  [SWAP]
> ├─sdc3        8:35   0    64G  0 part
> ├─sdc4        8:36   0    32G  0 part  /vhome/kevin/hex
> ├─sdc5        8:37   0    32G  0 part  /vhome/kevin/hex/build
> ├─sdc6        8:38   0   192G  0 part
> ├─sdc7        8:39   0    64G  0 part
> ├─sdc8        8:40   0    32G  0 part
> ├─sdc9        8:41   0    32G  0 part
> └─sdc10       8:42   0   3.2T  0 part  /tmp
> sdd           8:48   0   3.7T  0 disk
> └─sdd1        8:49   0   3.7T  0 part
>   └─md3       9:3    0   7.3T  0 raid5
>     └─md3p1 259:1    0   7.3T  0 md    /raid
> sde           8:64   0   3.7T  0 disk
> └─sde1        8:65   0   3.7T  0 part
>   └─md3       9:3    0   7.3T  0 raid5
>     └─md3p1 259:1    0   7.3T  0 md    /raid
> sdf           8:80   0   3.7T  0 disk
> └─sdf1        8:81   0   3.7T  0 part
> sdg           8:96   0   1.8T  0 disk
> └─sdg1        8:97   0   1.8T  0 part
> sr0          11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
>
> Where did I go wrong?  What's happening here?  Does anybody know?
>
> Why does mdstat show only 2 drives, but is not calling that an error since
> it's RAID-5?
>
>
> --
> Kevin O'Gorman
> #define QUESTION ((bb) || (!bb))   /* Shakespeare */
>
> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
>



-- 
Kevin O'Gorman
#define QUESTION ((bb) || (!bb))   /* Shakespeare */

Please consider the environment before printing this email.
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