Re: Raid shuts down uncleanly?

Thank you for your reply!

Today, I've dpkg-reconfigured mdadm. It had all md-devices listed as necessary for root, and so I changed it so that only md0 (where root is) is listed as necessary. This for some reason got rid of the message saying that swap (md1) was busy. But md0 and md2 are still not unmounted.

I've been trying to find the shutdown log, but I've failed. Is it supposed to be in wtmp? If so, how do I read it -- it's binary.

The end of the shutdown messages are displayed so fast and then blanked out so that I have no time to see them all. I finally managed to catch a few of them with my camera (!), and this is what is said, among other things:

* It can't create the /etc/mtab log file
* It can't create the /lib/init/rw/.mdadm directory

Both are because the file system is read-only, but I do not know if they are normal messages or related to my issue somehow.

The rest is only a repetition of "md0 still in use", etc.

If someone can instruct me in how to log the shutdown properly I'll post the log here to see if anyone can help.

Thanks for helping!

/landhaj

----- Original Message ----
From: Bob McGowan <bob_mcgowan@symantec.com>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Sent: Monday, March 5, 2007 10:44:07 PM
Subject: Re: Raid shuts down uncleanly?

Land Haj wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm still trying to get used to having raid-1 on my new etch
> installation. I have a very simple question:
>
> When I reboot or turn off my computer, the system always has trouble
> umounting the raid devices. It says they are busy (in red, warning
> letters). But the shutdown completes anyway.
>
> Then, when I boot into the system again, it says that the journal is
> being recovered.
>
> Have I somehow misconfigured my system so that it shuts down uncleanly,
> and if so, how do I fix it?
>
> The raid configuration was done at installation with the rc1 debian
> installer for etch.
>
> Please help!
>
> /landhaj
>
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It's normal for the root device to not unmount during shutdown, but
there should also be a message that it was re-mounted read-only.

My system, with a raid-1 for the boot device and similar messages on
shutdown, doesn't have problems with the reboot.

The root device is considered 'in use' because the system and system
shutdown scripts run from it (in other words, there are processes with
open files). In order to complete shutdown cleanly, the mount is
changed to read-only, which sets whatever bit(s) are needed to tell the
boot sequence scripts that the filesystem is clean.

So, for some reason, you're not getting a clean remount. More
information from the shutdown sequence is needed before I could
speculate any further.

Bob