Managing RAID on Linux

Name

raidstart

Synopsis

raidstart [options] mddevice

Although the modern kernel can now automatically detect and initialize RAID devices, it might be necessary to manually start a device. Maybe the array was not properly initialized when the system booted, or perhaps you are simply experimenting with various types of arrays. The command is also useful for restarting arrays in the unlikely event that they have crashed.

Options

-a, --all

Applies the command to all RAID devices found in /etc/raidtab. You will not need to specify an mddevice.

-c, --configfile filename

Uses a configuration file other than the default /etc/raidtab.

-h, --help

Displays some helpful information about the command.

-V, --version

Displays the command’s version.

Example usage

The following starts all arrays described in /etc/raidtab:

# raidstart -a

The following starts all arrays defined in /home/derek/example-raid0:

# raidstart -a -c /home/derek/example-raid0

The following starts only the array /dev/md2, as described in /etc/raidtab:

# raidstart /dev/md2

The following starts /dev/md2, as defined in /home/derek/example-raid0:

# raidstart -c /home/derek/example-raid0 /dev/md2

raidstart can also be included in system initialization scripts. This is quite useful in cases in which you don’t want the kernel to automatically detect and activate software arrays. Perhaps you would like to defer array startup until after some other scripts have run, or maybe you are not using MS-DOS partitions and simply can’t autostart. Simply add the ...