> That's not the point: we don't even _look_ for a raid superblock unless
> the partition is marked for autostart.
Yup -- a *REAL* bummer if the partition doesn't have a partition type.
> There are related problems we need to deal with regularly when building
> filesystems: what happens if you reformat a raid disk as a single ext2fs
> filesystem?
If that's all you do, it'll auto-restart !
You also need to "unmkraid" it (i.e. ZAP the SB) and/or change the partition
type.
> The raid superblock remains intact, but we do _not_ want to autostart it.
Sure -- care is needed.
You need to do *something* -- partition table and/or SB.
> That's why it's best to leave things as they are:
I disagree -- as you have pointed out, *just* reformatting as ext2 is not
enough -- more is needed anyway.
> if a partition is not recognisable as having a raid superblock,
> we don't autostart it.
I suspect you mean "if a partition *TYPE* is not recognisable as being one
which *MIGHT* hold a raid superblock and that there is a suitable RAID SB".
The whole point of this is that if there is no partition type, the first
part fails. if there were an " ... or there is no partition type ..." I'd be
happy, but therein lines the problem -- how does one know where to look ?
Maybe a boot time key to list the extra partions at which to look would be
the most generic -- should solve all cases (e.g. /dev/sdc).
However, that's not my problem. For my needs, the code can be HACKed to do
the neccessary ... How about looking for superblocks in all RAID devices ?
This would allow recursive RAID to autostart ...
