Software Raid1 and boot failure

[ikke]

Hi,

I have set up a software raid-1 with 2 IDE disks successfully. Everything seemed to work well until I tried to imitate a disk failure. I turned the box off and unplugged 1 HD. After I did that it was impossible to reboot (the bootloader (grub) doesn't appear). It didn't even work to reboot with a floppy. Now I have plugged both drives again and everything works again. Why did this failure test not work?

Any help is appreciated.

Below you can find some info about my setup:

----df ------------ ------------------------
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/md2 7052308 2554648 4139420 39% /
/dev/md0 100890 14198 81483 15% /boot
/dev/md3 68754336 325860 64935952 1% /home
none 256916 0 256916 0% /dev/shm
/dev/cdrom1 551580 551580 0 100% /mnt/cdrom1

----- cat /proc/mdstat -----------------
Personalities : [raid1]
read_ahead 1024 sectors
md3 : active raid1 hde5[0] hdg5[1]
69850496 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md1 : active raid1 hde3[0] hdg3[1]
1052160 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 hde2[0] hdg2[1]
7164800 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active raid1 hde1[0] hdg1[1]
104192 blocks [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: <none>

[Dolda2000]

Since GRUB didn't start, it seems more like a hardware related fault than a Linux fault. Maybe the IDE controller card BIOS couldn't handle disconnecting an entire bus without reconfiguring.

[andutt]

Thats waht i have said about software RAID before....not good, buy a a hardware raid card instead...it garanted to work.

Regards

[Dolda2000]

Well, I dunno, but since the kernel wasn't even started, I'm having a really hard time believing that the software RAID caused this.

[ikke]

Thanks for the replies.
I also think that the problem is caused by the bios or hardware configuration.
About 30mins ago the electricity felt out for about 0.5secs, my computer rebooted and now it seems that the raid is resynchronizing...

$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
read_ahead 1024 sectors
md3 : active raid1 hde5[0] hdg5[1]
69850496 blocks [2/2] [UU]
[=====>...............] resync = 28.6% (20019056/69850496) finish=79.3min speed=10461K/sec
md1 : active raid1 hde3[0] hdg3[1]
1052160 blocks [2/2] [UU]
resync=DELAYED
md2 : active raid1 hde2[0] hdg2[1]
7164800 blocks [2/2] [UU]
resync=DELAYED
md0 : active raid1 hde1[0] hdg1[1]
104192 blocks [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: <none>

Once everything has been rebuild (and after I have made a decent backup) I will retry that failure test and boot after some bios changes. I'll let you know if it works or not.