raid not booting

[Rashkae]

Reinhard Haller wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> this morning my ubuntu box wasn't accessible (no local access, no ssh, 
> no http -- ping worked), so I resetted the server.
> 
> The box didn't boot with the following messages:
> 
> There appears to be one or more degraded RAID devices ...
> 
> md0: incative sdc2[2](S) sdb2[1](S) sdc3[3](S)
> 
> The suggested start with the degraded raid (mdadm -R /dev/md0) gives the 
> following messages:
> 
> mdadm: CREATE user root not found
> mdadm: CREATE group disk not found
> raid5: not enough operational devices for md0 (2/3 failed)
> 
> I tested all drives with the Samsung HD-Utility: they are all 3 fully 
> operational, the partitions are all present!
> 
> Operating system: ubuntu 8.04 kernel: 2.6.24-18-server
> 
> Any suggestions how to get it working again?
> 
> Thanks
> Reinhard
> 
> 


Suggestions only, not tested in this kind of scenario, and may cause
permanent data loss.

Since all partitions are present and accounted for, you try to just
force  the array to assemble

mdadm -A -f /dev/md0

On a side (snide?) note, please tell me that is a typo in your message
and you didn't really create a Raid 5 array with 2 partitions on the
same drive! (sdc)