The machine came to life eventually. I've attached the system messages as I 
think it may be helpful

David Dreezer

Attachment: messages.txt.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

On Apr 7, 2011, at 10:39 AM, David Dreezer wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
> Interesting.. when I do mdadm --stop --scan it stops all the /dev/md* just 
> fine, or at least tells me that it does. When I then issue mdadm --assemble 
> --scan --config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf it locks the computer up. My 
> ssh session freezes, I can no longer connect to or ping the machine.
> 
> I'll make a trip to the data center and see if there is anything on the 
> console that offers a clue as to the issue that we're seeing. Perhaps I have 
> a faulty piece of hardware or something?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> David Dreezer
> 
> 
> 
> On Apr 7, 2011, at 2:32 AM, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> 
>> Hi David,
>> 
>>> I have an interesting issue with one of our servers failing in the 
>>> partition task. It's failing on the assemble with an error that the md is 
>>> already in use
>>> 
>>> (CMD) mdadm --assemble --scan --config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf 1> 
>>> /tmp/BLcvisEctM 2> /tmp/gczYIUwN4C
>>> Executing: mdadm --assemble --scan --config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf
>>> Command had non-zero exit code
>>> (STDERR) mdadm: /dev/md1 is already in use.
>> [...]
>> 
>> I won't have much time to look into this myself before mid next week, so I'd 
>> be
>> grateful if you could try to figure out the following:
>> 
>> If an array is running already, will the above assemble-attempt fail in
>> precisely this way? I think it should be possible to try the following 
>> commands
>> after FAI has aborted on this particular server:
>> 
>> mdadm --stop --scan
>> mdadm --assemble --scan --config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf
>> mdadm --assemble --scan --config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf
>> 
>> where the first --assemble succeeds, whereas the second one fails. If that's 
>> the
>> case, we can hopefully fix that by adding the mdadm --stop --scan before 
>> doing
>> the assemble. (If you like, you can simply hack that in there and if it a 
>> try;
>> just change the mdadm --assemble ... to  mdadm --stop --scan ; mdadm 
>> --assemble
>> ...)
>> 
>> Thanks a lot in advance,
>> Michael
>> 
> 

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