Slackware 14.0 : Problem (and solution) with Intel FakeRAID
 

Hi guys,

I had a problem when trying to install new fresh Slackware 14.0 over a system with a fakeraid (Intel Storage Matrix)
and as I found the way how to fix it, I want to share here the workaround :

Context/Configuration:
RAID1 with 2 drives /dev/sda /dev/sdb of 500GiB each. This array is the only one on the system and therefore will be
bootable

Problem:
The raid array was well detected (/dev/md126 and /dev/md127), but the following problems occured :
- the array was not writable (mounted read-only")
- mdadm --detail /dev/md126 gave "State: resyncing (PENDING)" and never rebuilt the array.

Cause :
"mdmon" daemon is not launched. Even not found on /sbin

Temporarily workaround: Did a network install of the mdadm-3.2.5-i486.txz
a. "ifconfig" to set the network
b. using "wget" to download package
c. installpkg
d. run "mdmon /dev/md127" to start the daemon

Wait for the array to be rebuilt ... and then can do the setup normally.

Cheers.

Hmmm. Perhaps I missed important information about "RAID=1" kernel parameter. I have to check it.

well, I never used any raid related kernel parameters and everything works smooth
(provided you use initramfs)

As for Slackware-14, for some reason mdmon is missing in initramfs.
So I extracted ISO image, unpacked initrd.img, added mdmon into /sbin, and rebuilt ISO image.
Now IMSM RAID-1 starts as "auto-read-only", which is essentially "read-write"
(changes to r/w when you mount md126)

PS: ISOMaster can be used to modify a bootable ISO without complete rebuilding