[CentOS] Re: Weird crash with CentOS 5.1

Mon Jan 7 01:34:42 UTC 2008
Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard at gmail.com>

Hi

On Jan 6, 2008 12:03 AM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:
> I am sure it is a raid driver issue.
>
> Have you considered running one of the OSes (linux or windows) in a VM.
>
> That way, you can share files and have both available at the same time,
> unlike dual boot, where you need to reboot to get the other OS.
>


I think I know what is happening and what happened.

After repairing the partition from the Fedora 8 DVD, I restarted
booting from the disk with CentOS

I then compiled the latest kernel from kernel.org and rebooted.
It failed to see the RAID array and mounted the disk individually
(from /dev/sda2).

When I rebooted again using the CentOS kernel, again I got a kernel panic.

I think this is what happened earlier on.
The EXT2/3 drivers I used in Windows wasn't using the RAID array but
writing directly on the physical disk, as such damaging the RAID
mirror. When CentOS booted, it got confused with the data it was
reading and did a kernel panic.

Same thing happened using my compiled kernel, it wrote data on the
first disk only rather than on the mirror.

For some reasons, the CentOS kernel RAID driver doesn't handle that
error properly and will kernel panic.

The Fedora 8 kernel, does handle it properly and is able to access the disk.

Now I have no idea on how to compile a newer kernel and make it
recognise the RAID array. There aren't much tool available to manage
the RAID mirror.
It looks like one kernel see the RAID disk name as something and the
centos kernel as another.

Jean-Yves