swapon and raid systems

[Dave Carrigan <dave@rudedog.org>]

Hi all,

I have a couple of systems that use kernel RAIDs (specifically,
mirrors).  The systems also have regular (non-mirrored) partitions for
swap. When the systems boot, the swap partitions don't get installed. I
have isolated it to the fact that the boot scripts first grep for
"resync" in /proc/mdstat, and only run swapon if the grep fails (i.e,
there's no "resync" string in /proc/mdstat).

Unfortunately, it appears that at boot time, these systems *always* have
resync in mdstat, because swap never seems to be added after a
reboot. Which leads to some questions:

1. what is the purpose of this check?
2. is it normal for my raids to always be resyncing at boot (*)?
3. suggestions for a good (maintainable) approach to ensuring that my
   non-RAID swap partitions always get enabled at boot?

(*) Thinking back, I think that all of the reboots on these systems have
    been due to abnormal causes (i.e., a power failure yesterday), so
    maybe resyncing is normal after unplanned reboots?

Thanks for any help,

-- 
Dave Carrigan (dave@rudedog.org)            | Yow! Someone is DROOLING on my
UNIX-Apache-Perl-Linux-Firewalls-LDAP-C-DNS | collar!!
Seattle, WA, USA                            | 
http://www.rudedog.org/                     |