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Adam Ryczkowski
Asked: 2012-09-16 03:18:06 +0800 CST

mdadm kernel log messages explained

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Welcome.

I try to recover from linux software raid failure. I am in a process of recreating the superblocks based on a syslog from the system when it was healthy. The log speaks about 2 md devices, each based on 5 500GB partitions. The RAID-5 /dev/md5 is composed from /dev/sd[b-f]6 and RAID-6 /dev/md6 is composed from /dev/sd[b-f]5. The relevant part dmesg log looks like this:

[    5.964928] raid5: allocated 5265kB for md5
[    5.979771] 4: w=1 pa=0 pr=5 m=1 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.987064] 1: w=2 pa=0 pr=5 m=1 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.994256] 3: w=3 pa=0 pr=5 m=1 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    6.001441] 2: w=4 pa=0 pr=5 m=1 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    6.008665] 0: w=5 pa=0 pr=5 m=1 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    6.015883] raid5: raid level 5 set md5 active with 5 out of 5 devices, algorithm 2
[    6.031441] RAID5 conf printout:
[    6.039266]  --- rd:5 wd:5
[    6.046856]  disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb6
[    6.054308]  disk 1, o:1, dev:sdf6
[    6.061524]  disk 2, o:1, dev:sdc6
[    6.068667]  disk 3, o:1, dev:sde6
[    6.075774]  disk 4, o:1, dev:sdd6
[    6.089504] md5: bitmap initialized from disk: read 1/1 pages, set 0 bits
[    6.096768] created bitmap (15 pages) for device md5
[    6.141010] md5: detected capacity change from 0 to 1978409418752
[    6.153794]  md5: unknown partition table

[    5.594614] raid5: device sde5 operational as raid disk 3
[    5.599701] raid5: device sdd5 operational as raid disk 4
[    5.604750] raid5: device sdf5 operational as raid disk 1
[    5.609879] raid5: device sdc5 operational as raid disk 2
[    5.615032] raid5: device sdb5 operational as raid disk 0
[    5.621672] raid5: allocated 5265kB for md6
[    5.627243] 3: w=1 pa=0 pr=5 m=2 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.632846] 4: w=2 pa=0 pr=5 m=2 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.638502] 1: w=3 pa=0 pr=5 m=2 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.644155] 2: w=4 pa=0 pr=5 m=2 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.649844] 0: w=5 pa=0 pr=5 m=2 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0
[    5.655566] raid5: raid level 6 set md6 active with 5 out of 5 devices, algorithm 2
[    5.667653] RAID5 conf printout:
[    5.673791]  --- rd:5 wd:5
[    5.679837]  disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb5
[    5.685721]  disk 1, o:1, dev:sdf5
[    5.691570]  disk 2, o:1, dev:sdc5
[    5.697348]  disk 3, o:1, dev:sde5
[    5.703122]  disk 4, o:1, dev:sdd5
[    5.710762] md6: bitmap initialized from disk: read 1/1 pages, set 0 bits
[    5.716915] created bitmap (15 pages) for device md6
  • What do the numbers on the line [ 5.979771] 4: w=1 pa=0 pr=5 m=1 a=2 r=5 op1=0 op2=0 mean, including the first 4:?
  • What do the numbers on the line [ 6.039266] --- rd:5 wd:5] mean?
  • What do the numbers on the line [ 6.046856] disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb6 mean?
  • Does the line [ 6.096768] created bitmap (15 pages) for device md5 tell anything about the place, where the bitmap is located and what is its size?
linux

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After a mail exchange on [email protected] mailing list, I've got the following answer from Mr. Robin Hill:

    Question 1:

    • 4 is the raid device number

    • w=1 indicates the number of working disks found so far

    • pa=0 is the previous algorithm (used when reshaping)

    • pr=5 is the previous number of raid devices (used when reshaping)

    • m=1 is the maximum number of degraded disks allowed for the array to run

    • a=2 is the algorithm used

    • r=5 is the number of raid devices

    • op1=0 indicates that the disk is not a parity-only disk in the previous layout (used when reshaping)

    • op2=0 indicates that the disk is not a parity-only disk in the current layout

    Question 2:

    • rd is the number of devices in the array
    • wd is the number of working devices in the array

    Question 3:

    • 0 is the raid device number
    • o:1 indicates that it's operational (i.e. not marked as faulty)
    • dev:sdb6 indicates the kernel device name

    Question 4:

    It doesn't tell you anything about the place. I've no idea how the number of pages equates to the bitmap size/bitmap chunk size though.

    In the above cases, the raid device number is its position within the array, so from 0..N-1 for an N-device array. This will indicate the order you'll need to use when recreating the array.

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