The /etc/init.d/checkfs script is checking for the existence of /etc/raidtab and /proc/mdstat and then it tries to start all raid devices except those which are explicitly listed in the fstab with the noauto flag. I think this is a completely wrong approach and leads to various problems. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create a half written /etc/raidtab like you had been just left off writing one 2. Reboot your system (or run /etc/init.d/checkfs) 3. Actual Results: At the very least you get dropped into single user mode because of the failure to start some devices. It might be possible that with certain scenarios an md device gets started which should not be, and this may lead to irreparable damage to a raid array. Expected Results: This functionality should be implemented in a controllable fashion, preferably a separate /etc/init.d/raidstart script which can be controlled via variables like RAID_AUTOSTART="yes|no" (globally) and RAID_START_DEVICES="md0 md1 md2" (per device) in some file like /etc/conf.d/raidstart so that only those arrays get started which are explicitly declared as ones to be started, regardless of what is or isn't present in the fstab. I think this one is rather easy to fix, especially for someone who has a good overview of the gentoo rc system. There are a couple of related problems with bug ids #23693, #9163, #29243 which should be reviewed when fixing this.
So what is wrong with expecting to know how, and setup a proper /etc/raidtab if they are using raid ? Most other initsystem out there (all I checked) do expect this. Its the same as to say: You should not use /etc/fstab to try and detiremine what partitions to mount.
the raid stuff worked perfectly on my system ... i only had to setup /etc/raidtab (like i had it in slackware) and /etc/fstab and everything else fell into place ...
Well, automounting filesystems from fstab is trivial among all Unices. The md device is a Linux-specific creature, so I don't think it should be trivial to start it up without the system administrator explicitly wanting this to happen. Another point of view is that in the Gentoo concept, not even starting up network interfaces, or syslog, etc. from rc is a trivial default, one has to explicitly add them via rc-update, so with this in mind one would expect that he also has to explicitly add some raidstart script into rc, or, if that functionality is integrated into some other script then one has to enable it via some generic configuration mechanism, like conf.d for example.
It is not done automatically - you need to setup raidtab ... ?
i dont know what you mean by 'setup raidtab' ... what i mean is this: root@rux0r 0 root # cat /etc/raidtab raiddev /dev/md0 raid-level 0 nr-raid-disks 4 persistent-superblock 1 chunk-size 4 device /dev/hde raid-disk 0 device /dev/hdf raid-disk 1 device /dev/hdg raid-disk 2 device /dev/hdh raid-disk 3 raiddev /dev/md1 raid-level 0 nr-raid-disks 4 persistent-superblock 1 chunk-size 4 device /dev/hdi raid-disk 0 device /dev/hdj raid-disk 1 device /dev/hdk raid-disk 2 device /dev/hdl raid-disk 3 root@rux0r 0 root # grep md /etc/fstab /dev/md0 /stuff reiserfs rw,notail 0 0 /dev/md1 /raid reiserfs rw,notail 0 0
dont create bogus files
