mdadm Raid 5 hang in Fedora 8 / Ubuntu 7.10
Come across an intriguing problem, was hoping someone could shed light on the situation. I recently converted my desktop system into a server running Fedora 8 (I have another Ubuntu 7.10 install on another HD.)
AMD X2 4400+, 3GB ram, Nvidia 7800GT, 430W PSU, 8x320GB HDD, 1x150GB Raptor, 1x120GB IDE and 1xDVD drive.
The 8x320 drives are configured in a Raid 5 array I built/expanded from a Raid 0 4x320, since I wanted to add redundancy. It worked perfectly until tonight; after a system reboot, I attempted to reload the array with
`sudo mdadm --assemble /dev/md0`; md0 being the array configured in the /etc/mdadm.conf file using a UUID. System hangs around 5 seconds after this command executes, telling me that 7 of the drives are now active and 1 is running as a spare.
I systematically reboot and retry this operation, unplugging a different harddrive each time until I find the spare. Lo and behold, the array constructs, and I can mount it correctly. This leads me to believe the problem is in the HDD that I pulled.
I format the HDD using `sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdj,` and it formats correctly, indicating that there is nothing wrong with the drive. I then try to re-add it to the array using `sudo mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdj`; the system adds the drive, and predicting the freeze I execute `sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0,` which informs me that the spare was activated and is rebuilding. However, the system, as I predicted, hangs.
My question to the community is this: why would a healthy, new disk, that was running the night before, suddenly kill my RAID? At one point i even received a kernel panic, indicating a fault in the processor (which is false.) Do I need to reconstruct my entire machine just to add this last drive?
Thanks.
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