mdadm works really well!
Over the last week, I've been having all kinds of problems with one of
my servers. I even did a clean install of Debian 13 to try to sort it
out. It didn't take long after that for me to lose my SSH connection to
this headless device. Hooking up a keyboard and monitor didn't help. It
appeared that I was losing the ability to login.
Over the course of figuring out and resolving the problem, I ended up
having to reboot several times. These reboots were typically accompanied
with error messages about not being run the shutdown process. I blamed
it on the boot SSD apparently going bad, which was frightening because
the server had been doing a RAID reshape for the past while. With the
reshape backup file on the SSD, I quickly got a replacement and copied
the failing drive over to it.
With the new drive installed things are working well again. And the
reshape is continuing - another 4 days to go at the current rate.
The --backup-file= option is a real life saver, as is the ability to
--grow --continue. I've had my problems with mdadm in the past, but this
time it seems to have above by surviving a faulty boot drive and taking
multiple starts and stops in stride.
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