Failed Drives in Software RAID

[Shane Archer]

Hi all,

I am trying to set up a software RAID5 on FC3, and having a heckuva time.

The computer is configured like this:

/boot and / are on a drive that is plugged into the motherboard's SATA0 port.
Three 160GB WD drives are plugged into a Promise SATA150TX2 controller.
The motherboard is an Intel SE7520AF2 server board.

The problem is, whenever I go to create the array, one drive always gets 
reported as failed. I have done repeated surface scans on the drives (using 
both fsck and badblocks) and I am quite certain the drives are alright. On 
top of that, when the array starts building, the system eventually locks 
up, without fail.

So the question becomes, where might I best troubleshoot this? Could it be 
a software problem? A hardware problem? Has anybody had problems with the 
Promise card in FC3?

Here's the mdadm command I am using:

# mdadm -Cv /dev/md0 -l5 -n3 -c128 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd

And here's the log after running it:

Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: bind<sdb>
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: bind<sdc>
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: bind<sdd>
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: raid5: automatically using best checksumming 
function: pIII_sse
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:    pIII_sse  :  2896.000 MB/sec
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: raid5: using function: pIII_sse (2896.000 
MB/sec)
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: raid5: device sdc operational as raid disk 1
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: raid5: device sdb operational as raid disk 0
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: raid5: allocated 3162kB for md0
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: raid5: raid level 5 set md0 active with 2 
out of 3 devices, algorithm 2
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: RAID5 conf printout:
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  --- rd:3 wd:2 fd:1
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  disk 1, o:1, dev:sdc
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: RAID5 conf printout:
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  --- rd:3 wd:2 fd:1
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  disk 1, o:1, dev:sdc
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel:  disk 2, o:1, dev:sdd
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: .<6>md: syncing RAID array md0
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction 
speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc.
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction 
speed: 1000 KB/sec/disc.
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith 
(but not more than 200000 KB/sec)
for reconstruction.
Jan 17 21:57:47 xtreme kernel: md: using 128k window, over a total of 
156249856 blocks.

And here's the output from mdadm -E afterwards:

# mdadm -E /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
           Magic : a92b4efc
         Version : 00.90.01
            UUID : 43e05773:9c581b8a:23c8cdb0:d71025ac
   Creation Time : Mon Jan 17 21:57:47 2005
      Raid Level : raid5
     Device Size : 156249856 (149.01 GiB 159.100 GB)
    Raid Devices : 3
   Total Devices : 3
Preferred Minor : 0

     Update Time : Mon Jan 17 21:57:47 2005
           State : clean
  Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 3
  Failed Devices : 1
   Spare Devices : 1
        Checksum : 11683037 - correct
          Events : 0.1

          Layout : left-symmetric
      Chunk Size : 128K

       Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
this     0       8       16        0      active sync   /dev/sdb
    0     0       8       16        0      active sync   /dev/sdb
    1     1       8       32        1      active sync   /dev/sdc
    2     2       0        0        2      faulty removed
    3     3       8       48        3      spare   /dev/sdd

 From the output above, it would appear that /dev/sdd is the dead drive. 
However, if I unplug that drive, reboot the system, and run the same mdadm 
-Cv command with only two drives, it still reports 1 working, 1 failed. 
So...hardware problem?

Thanks for any help,

Shane