Software RAID on SPARC64

[David Johnson <dj@david-web.co.uk>]

Hi all,

I've been having problems with software RAID (using mdadm) on Sarge on an 
Ultra Enterprise 450. There seems to be a bug somewhere causing corruption of 
Sun disk labels.

I start with 8 SCSI disks with valid Sun disk labels and one partition filling 
each disk. The partition types are set to "Linux RAID autodetect".

I can create a RAID 5 array without problems. This is the command I'm using:
mdadm -C -l5 -n7 
-x1 /dev/md0 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1 /dev/sdg1 /dev/sdh1 /dev/sdi1 /dev/sdj1 /dev/sdk1

If I now reboot, everything is OK and the array is detected and configured.

The problem occurs when I format the array. E.g.:
mkfs.ext2 /dev/md0

This works OK and no errors are given. However when the system is rebooted, 
around half the disks now have corrupt disk labels. If I re-create the disk 
labels and restore the partition tables, everything is fine when I reboot. 
The array is started correctly and the disk labels are maintained on 
subsequent reboots. Only formatting the array causes the problem.

I have tried with other filing systems and the same happens. Not all the disks 
are affected, only around half of them (the last time I did it, sd[efghi] 
were affected).

I'd be interested to know if anyone else seen this issue.

Regards,
David.

-- 
David Johnson
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