It seems like it really isn't an md issue -- when I remove everything to do with evms (userspace tools + initrd hooks) everything works fine.
I took your patch back out and put a few printks in there ... Without evms the "active" counter is 1 in an "idle" state, i. e. after the box has finished booting. With evms the counter is 2 in an "idle" state, and always one higher. Directly before any attempt to shut down the array the counter is 3 with evms (thus the error) but only 2 without it. I don't know if evms is buggy and fails to put back a reference or if the +1 increase in the active counter is legit, and md.c needs a better check then just "active needs to be below 3". Longish dmesg excerpt follows, maybe someone can pinpoint the cause and decide what needs to be done. md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27 md: bitmap version 4.39 md: linear personality registered for level -1 md: raid0 personality registered for level 0 md: raid1 personality registered for level 1 md: raid10 personality registered for level 10 raid5: automatically using best checksumming function: generic_sse generic_sse: 4566.000 MB/sec raid5: using function: generic_sse (4566.000 MB/sec) md: raid5 personality registered for level 5 md: raid4 personality registered for level 4 raid6: int64x1 1331 MB/s raid6: int64x2 1650 MB/s raid6: int64x4 2018 MB/s raid6: int64x8 1671 MB/s raid6: sse2x1 2208 MB/s raid6: sse2x2 3104 MB/s raid6: sse2x4 2806 MB/s raid6: using algorithm sse2x2 (3104 MB/s) md: raid6 personality registered for level 6 md: REF UP: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: bind<sdb> md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: bind<sdc> md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: bind<sdd> md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: bind<sde> md: REF DOWN: 1 md: REF UP: 2 md: REF UP: 3 md: REF DOWN: 2 raid5: device sdd operational as raid disk 2 raid5: device sdc operational as raid disk 1 raid5: device sdb operational as raid disk 0 raid5: allocated 4262kB for md0 raid5: raid level 5 set md0 active with 3 out of 4 devices, algorithm 2 RAID5 conf printout: --- rd:4 wd:3 fd:1 disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb disk 1, o:1, dev:sdc disk 2, o:1, dev:sdd md0: bitmap initialized from disk: read 15/15 pages, set 0 bits, status: 0 created bitmap (233 pages) for device md0 RAID5 conf printout: md: REF DOWN: 1 --- rd:4 wd:3 fd:1 disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb disk 1, o:1, dev:sdc disk 2, o:1, dev:sdd disk 3, o:1, dev:sde md: REF UP: 2 md: REF UP: 3 md: REF DOWN: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 md: syncing RAID array md0 md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc. md: using maximum available idle IO bandwidth (but not more than 200000 KB/sec) for reconstruction. md: using 128k window, over a total of 488386432 blocks. md: REF UP: 2 md: REF DOWN: 1 *** [up to here everything is fine, but the counter never again drops to 1 afterwards] *** md: REF UP: 2 Attempting manual resume kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. md: REF UP: 3 hw_random: RNG not detected md: REF DOWN: 2 Adding 4000176k swap on /dev/evms/sda2. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:4000176k EXT3 FS on dm-0, internal journal md: REF UP: 3 md: REF DOWN: 2 *** [last two lines repeated fairly often, but more like excessive polling than an infinite error loop] *** Regards, C. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
