isw: unsupported map state 0x3 on /dev/sda for RAID_Volume0

[Christian Schuhegger]

Hello,

I am running ubuntu/windows vista in a dual boot set-up on a machine 
with an intel matrix raid controller. I started to do that with gutsy 
7.10 already last year in June and upgraded a month ago to hardy 8.04. 
After the upgrade I had some difficulties, because ubuntu does not 
support fake raids by default, but I got it under control.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

Since yesterday the system refuses to boot. The initial bios screen 
tells me that the raid volume 0 has failed and finally I only get the 
message:
"disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter"

Currently I try to analyse the problem with a KNOPPIX 5.3.1 and dmraid. 
I've attached the output of
   dmraid -ay -vvvv -dddd
and
   dmraid -n

I've also generated the output of
   dmraid -r -D /dev/sda
   dmraid -r -D /dev/sdb

One of my questions is, if the metadata of both disks should be 
identical? Becaus if I create a "hexdump -C" and run diff on the output 
I get differences (attached). Another question would be if I modify the 
metadata by hand and write it back to the disk if this would work, 
because I see in the data structures defined in:
dmraid/1.0.0.rc14/lib/format/ataraid/isw.h
-- snip start --
struct isw {
         int8_t sig[MAX_SIGNATURE_LENGTH];/* 0x0 - 0x1F */
         uint32_t check_sum;             /* 0x20 - 0x23  MPB Checksum */
         uint32_t mpb_size;              /* 0x24 - 0x27 Size of MPB */
         uint32_t family_num;            /* 0x28 - 0x2B Checksum from 
first time this config was written */
-- snip end --
that there are some checksums.

When I run
   fdisk -l /dev/sda
I get the following output:
   unable to seek on /dev/sda
On /dev/sdb fdisk starts without problems.

After my experiments with knoppix and dmraid finally the system is 
booting again, even if I did not write anything back on the disks, at 
least not knowingly. Windows does not show any strange behaviour up to now.

I am uncertain if the problem is due to a real hardware problem or due 
to some misbehaviour of Linux, especially, because I found hints that 
ubuntu hardy 8.04 has some problems in that direction:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dmraid/+bug/219393

Another bug report led me to upgrade to kernel 2.6.24-18 just before my 
problems with the raid started:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/209454

I would be interested in your opinion on how to continue from here. I've 
ordered a big external harddrive to at least backup the full disk 
content, but after that backup what would be the recommended way to 
continue? Replace the disks, because it is a hardware problem or fix 
ubuntu, because some bug in ubuntu may cause the problem?

Many thanks and have a nice day,
-- 
Christian Schuhegger
http://www.el-chef.de/
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