I am in the process of building my first RAID5 array. I've used mdadm to create the following set up:
root@bondigas:~# mdadm --detail /dev/md1
/dev/md1:
Version : 00.90
Creation Time : Wed Oct 20 20:00:41 2010
Raid Level : raid5
Array Size : 5860543488 (5589.05 GiB 6001.20 GB)
Used Dev Size : 1953514496 (1863.02 GiB 2000.40 GB)
Raid Devices : 4
Total Devices : 4
Preferred Minor : 1
Persistence : Superblock is persistent
Update Time : Wed Oct 20 20:13:48 2010
State : clean, degraded, recovering
Active Devices : 3
Working Devices : 4
Failed Devices : 0
Spare Devices : 1
Layout : left-symmetric
Chunk Size : 64K
Rebuild Status : 1% complete
UUID : f6dc829e:aa29b476:edd1ef19:85032322 (local to host bondigas)
Events : 0.12
Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
0 8 16 0 active sync /dev/sdb
1 8 32 1 active sync /dev/sdc
2 8 48 2 active sync /dev/sdd
4 8 64 3 spare rebuilding /dev/sde
While that's going I decided to format the beast with the following command:
root@bondigas:~# mkfs.ext4 /dev/md1p1
mke2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
/dev/md1p1 alignment is offset by 63488 bytes.
This may result in very poor performance, (re)-partitioning suggested.
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=16 blocks, Stripe width=48 blocks
97853440 inodes, 391394047 blocks
19569702 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
11945 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
102400000, 214990848
Writing inode tables: ^C 27/11945
root@bondigas:~# ^C
I am unsure what to do about "/dev/md1p1 alignment is offset by 63488 bytes." and how to properly partition the disks to match so I can format it properly.
