mdadm --create won't work like it should without proper device nodes (and devfs doesn't automatically create these because there aren't any arrays at that point!). Workaround: (this should be done in LiveCD startup scripts) for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10; do mknod /dev/md$i b 9 $i; done Real fix: make mdadm create the nodes, make devfs create few spare ones (in addition to active arrays) or some other hack. I don't really see any really good solution for this :/
/dev/md* gets created automatically whenever you load the raid modules, no? it does here, anyway.
Devices are only auto-created for RAID arrays that actually exist. When installing the system, there are none. Creating an array with mdadm requires the device node _before_ the array is even created, and thus _before_ it is active and running (which is when devfs would create one).
I know a solution to this.... don't use friggin devfs! *grin* You could always use udev. In fact, udev works perfectly in this situation. Gentoo is heading in the udev direction. In fact, the next LiveCD will be udev-based entirely. This does not mean that you won't be able to use devfs on your installed system, just that when you boot the LiveCD, it'll be using udev. Since we won't be releasing a LiveCD with a fixed devfs (or any hacks to work around the inabilities of devfs), I am going to mark this as RESOLVED-WONTFIX. If you think this needs to be discussed further, feel free to REOPEN this bug. Thank you for pointing this out, though. I have added it to my list of things to check for on the next LiveCD during QA.
Alrighty then... I'm not too sure it'll be technically feasable for us to use udev in the time we have left, so I am going to REOPEN this just in case.
Alrighty... apparently udev has the same behavior... I can tell you that this won't get fixed due to time for 2004.3, but I am making sure it defintely gets done for 2005.0...
We've documented this for 2004.3... I am going to reassign this to base-system and see what they want to do with it. Also, I think sys-apps mdadm should probably be moved to sys-fs/mdadm instead.
Yes, this behavior is definitely there for udev. I freshly imaged a few servers and found I couldn't setup the raid devices because there were no /dev/mdX entries. Where may I ask was this documented for 2004.3? I never saw it, I was about to create a bug when I found this.
BTW, the following is correct, the first comment didn't work: for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10; do mknod /dev/md${i} b 9 ${i}; done
You can create the /dev/md* devices by using mknod. .mark
Would this possibly be affecting me (see http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=2053048 ) and this will be in 2005.0 still, right (just double checking, i know it was already said) because it does not list the bug as closed and I imagine 2005.0 will be out soon (correct me if I am wrong)? Nobody on the forums seems to know. thanks.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 80702 ***
