Avoiding unintended MDRaid activation on server install
Lukáš Pavljuk <[email protected]> Sun, 6 Jul 2025 13:56:52 +0200
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.debian.fai |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hello everyone, I'm facing one persistent issue that I've been trying to solve for quite some time now: If the clients' disks have been incorrectly/insufficiently wiped, a subsequent install might fail after creating the initial disk layout, as at that moment, leftover mdraid/lvm metadata get autodetected by either the kernel or the rd (not sure which is responsible for this), and activated, instanciating them as md/lvm devices. If the setup-storage routine then attempts to create a filesystem on their underlying block devices, it fails with a "Device or resource busy" Example layout: disk_config sda disklabel:gpt-bios primary - 1024 - - primary - 10240 - - primary - 0- - - disk_config sdb sameas:sda disk_config raid raid1 swap sda1,sdb1 swap sw raid1 / sda2,sdb2 ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro mdcreateopts="--metadata=0.90" raid1 - sda3,sdb3 - - disk_config lvm vg disk_tmp md2 disk_tmp-var /var 20G ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro disk_tmp-home /home 50G ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro disk_config tmpfs tmpfs /tmp RAM:10% defaults After a server gets installed with this config, if I wipe its disks only by running a wipefs -af /dev/sda /dev/sdb, raid signatures are left at the same offsets, and will get automatically activated after re-applying the same disk partition layout, preventing further device manipulation. Reading dracut.cmdline manual page, I tried appending rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 rd.lvm=0 to kernel's cmdline, but to no avail. Full fai log can be found at: https://pastebin.com/7LNgZ2av Note: The three errors following the partition.DEFAULT hook are related to my feeble attempt at solving this issue by activating all found mdraids and wiping all /dev/sd* /dev/vd* and /dev/md* devices pre-partitioning. But as the disk doesn't have its initial partition layout yet, no md devices are found, and so can't be wiped. Thank you for any advice you'll be able to provide! --L. Pavljuk