[Eclug] Debian no longer recognized partitions

On 11/16/2006 19:29, Chacko Cherackal wrote:
> I have a debian box with an IDE boot drive and 4 SATA drives used in a 
> software raid 5 configuration with mdadm.  This was been working completely 
> fine.  A few days ago I rebooted after a kernel update and now the 
> partitions on the drives aren't recognized.
[...]
> fdisk seems to indicate that the partition tables are still there, but I 
> can't work out why they are no longer recognized as /dev/sd[abcd]1.

I guess most newer distributions are using udev (or possibly hotplug?)
to dynamically create device nodes.  Given that it is something tied
pretty tightly to the kernel, is under very active development, and the
fact that you just upgraded the kernel makes me suspect it's some
problem with that.  I'm not real familiar with udev, but, like most
things, there are scripts that go along with the kernel software.

> Is there any way to force the system to recognize the partitioned drives?

Maybe try booting your old kernel as a stop-gap?

You could probably create the needed device nodes in /dev by hand using
the mknod command.  man 1 mknod and See /Documentation/devices.txt in
the kernel source tree for the  major, minor number combos you need to
create those.  I wouldn't use this as a permanent solution; better fix
the root cause.  But this route may allow you to move data off in order
to lower the heart rate...

~Jason

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