The mdraid init script addon code from the mdadm package assumes the device names to be in the 'dm standard' format, which is not necessarily true. It would be better to check the name more thorougly and if necessary let mdadm handle the creation of device inodes. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Create named array with symbolic device name 2.try starting the init script 3. Actual Results: Varies on exact configuration Either complete failure: * Starting up RAID devices... * /dev/md/tempstorage b 9 mknod: missing operand after `9' Try `mknod --help' for more information. * /dev/md/SystemArea b 9 mknod: missing operand after `9' Try `mknod --help' for more information. mdadm: /dev/md/tempstorage does not exist and is not a 'standard' name so it cannot be created mdadm: /dev/md/SystemArea does not exist and is not a 'standard' name so it cannot be created [ !! ] or if the configuration in mdadm.conf asks mdadm to create the inodes: * Starting up RAID devices... * /dev/md/tempstorage b 9 mknod: missing operand after `9' Try `mknod --help' for more information. * /dev/md/SystemArea b 9 mknod: missing operand after `9' Try `mknod --help' for more information. [ ok ] Expected Results: The array should be set up properly... And no additional mknod output should be printed out. In the output there are additional einfo lines (I added for debugging) to see what the script actually passes to mknod. The failing command is: mknod "${node}" b ${MAJOR} ${node##*[![:digit:]]} because ${node##*[![:digit:]]} is empty for symbolic names. Some check should be made here, if ${node##*[![:digit:]]} is empty and the mknod should be skipped. On the other hand, later on mdadm is called like this: output=$(mdadm -As 2>&1) By definition this implies --auto=yes which asks mdadm to create the necessary inodes anyway, for symbolic names --auto=md (etc.) works in an equal way. Imho, since usually a 'preferred' minor is stored in the superblock, you'd want to let mdadm create the inodes as needed. (And let the user override the --auto flag in the config where appropriate).
in the past, the --auto option didnt actually work, and no one was using non-standard names ive dropped the device creation from mdadm 3.0
