[Lilux-help] software raid problem

Hi folks, I set up software-raid1 for /, /usr, /tmp, /home and /var on a box with 2 sata-disks. I use debian sarge with the 2.6.8-2-k7-smp kernel. Everything works fine as long as I leave the 2 disks in the box, but as soon as I remove one of them, the arrays don't get started at all, or get assembled wrongly... (read on) I've tried with and without a (correct) /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf file. Without, the arrays get assembled, but wrongly, that is, e.g /tmp holds the content of /usr (all other mountpoints are messed up as well except /, which is /dev/md0, is always ok.) (Note that I pass the kernel all the info it should need, like: vmlinux root=/dev/md0 md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1 md=1,/dev/sda8,/dev/sdb8 etc) With the mdadm.conf file, the arrays dont get started at all because the md driver says one disk is missing... so I find myself without any of /usr /var /tmp and /home. Is there a parameter I can put into the mdadm.conf to make it less picky let it start the md device even if one disk is missing? (I've seen that by manually using mdadm afterwards with the right commandline options this is possible, but I need it at boot... automagically) Any ideas? Best regards, Yves p.s. How is your experience in using linux software raid in production? There is unfortunately no driver available for my raid chipset, so I have to use the md way. (anyway my sata-chipset can only provide fakeraid, so IMHO the md way is preferred... any opinions on that?) -- Linux 2.6.15 #2 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jan 3 21:35:02 CET 2006 i686 23:20:55 up 2:39, 0 users, load average: 0.33, 0.28, 0.36