Can't start system due to mdadm failing

Posted by user101212 on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by user101212
Published on 2012-10-26T22:39:06Z Indexed on 2012/10/26 23:17 UTC
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I used to have a 5-disk RAID5 partition, all working very well. I have then decided to add 3 more disks on it, totaling 8 equal disks. I've opened Webmin and just asked to add the disks.

Then I've realized the three disks had NTFS partitions, wich mdadm didn't complain, so I tried to stop the growing to remove the Windows partitions. I've tried to remove a disk using the same Webmin, but (as you might guess and call me fool...), the system became unstable.

By restarting the system, I've started receiving these messages:

"udev[126]: timeout: killing '/sbin/mdadm --incremental /dev/sdh1' [311]"

"udev[124]: timeout: killing '/sbin/mdadm --detail --export /dev/md0' [316]"

I've formated the system disk, hoping to get a system up and running. I did that with all RAID disks disconected, so everything was fine. I then reconnected the disks, wich was also ok. And finally installed mdadm using apt-get.

By reboot, the system has found the mdadm intention of growing the system, so the same messages appear again.

I other words: I can't even reach a command prompt to do something.

Any ideas of what to do? I believe I could turn off the system, disconnect the disks and look for the mdadm.conf file. Would that be a good idead? I'm no Linux expert, so I'm really lost here.

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