Re: [gentoo-user] General weirdness - a tale of woe.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Wednesday 27 May 2015 21:40:37 Mick wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 May 2015 15:16:35 Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Wednesday 27 May 2015 09:21:37 Rich Freeman wrote:
> > > I suspect that an initramfs might help
> > > you out, assuming the filesystems on that RAID are useful in early
> > > boot.  However, openrc and the raid init scripts should do a good job
> > > of configuring your raid if your mdadm.conf and such is correct, so if
> > > you don't need those filesystems until late in boot I don't think an
> > > initramfs will make much of a difference, since it would likely use
> > > the exact same userspace tools as openrc already does.  Make sure your
> > > mdadm.conf is set up to search all devices that could contain RAID
> > > (drive device names can get re-ordered), and it doesn't hurt to put
> > > ARRAY lines in mdadm.conf to give it hints.
> >
> > Like this?
> > ARRAY /dev/md1 devices=/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1
> > ARRAY /dev/md5 devices=/dev/sda5,/dev/sdb5
> > ARRAY /dev/md7 devices=/dev/sda7,/dev/sdb7
>
> No, I have always used something like:
>
> ARRAY /dev/md7 metadata=1.2 UUID=f9516418:7ef43875:4e922ca1:43796eb1 \
> name=data_server:0

My mdadm.conf is now this:
DEVICE /dev/sd[ab]1
DEVICE /dev/sd[ab]5
DEVICE /dev/sd[ab]7
ARRAY /dev/md1 devices=/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1
ARRAY /dev/md5 devices=/dev/sda5,/dev/sdb5
ARRAY /dev/md7 devices=/dev/sda7,/dev/sdb7

I'll see how that goes; so far no complaints about finding no arrays in the 
config file. I've never used UUIDs, preferring to be able to read what I'm 
specifying.

> It may be that the /dev/sdaX takes longer to settle and this causes your
> problem, but I can't tell for sure.

That does sound unlikely, especially as /dev/sdXN is suggested in the comments 
in mdadm.conf.

> > I've just switched on a few more sensors in gkrellm, and I see Vcor2 at
> > 3.00 and +3.3v at 3.34. Is it worth fiddling with those and related
> > settings in the BIOS? I've always hesitated to do that, preferring to let
> > it sort itself out.
>
> If you haven't O/C'ed it, I'd leave it alone.  However, if the voltage used
> to be something different in the past and is now registering a lower value
> using the same version BIOS firmware, then you could have a failing PSU.

No, no over-clocking here. Let the hardware work as designed, say I. And I 
haven't looked at voltages before so I don't know what's normal.

Failing PSU? Could be, and I have wondered. Maybe I'll make yet another 
attempt at setting up a new user and run without BOINC for a while, see if 
it's been applying too much load to this old bone-shaker.

> We all know that this will inevitably lead to behavioural problems (inc.
> waving your arms around and making noises ...  :-))

:-)  Thanks for your comments, Mick and friends.

-- 
Rgds
Peter