Currently the mdraid addon code/init script is checking for at least an ARRAY directive in /etc/mdadm.conf before running mdadm -As. This seems to be unneeded because, at least on my system, mdadm is able to detect superblock 1.1 raid arrays (that the kernel fails to detect, at least on MSDOS-style partition tables, like I have here). Mike, you implemented the test in 2005 (see URL), care to find a reason why, or can we drop the test and just always run it?
at the time, all raids were started automatically by the kernel, so running mdadm without devices made no sense. plus, --auto didnt actually work. since mdadm has started defaulting to newer superblocks that the kernel cant autostart, and the auto assemble stuff actually seems to work now, mdadm needs to be run all the time. there is still the point that often times, autostarted arrays without config files end up with stupid names like /dev/md126+, so really people should be configuring these in their mdadm.conf anyways. for my original intentions, the /proc/mdstat check should be sufficient since the rest of the brokeness has been fixed. http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-fs/mdadm/files/raid-start.sh-3.0?r1=1.1&r2=1.2
