How to remove Linux software RAID MD device?

Question

I'm trying to install openSUSE 12.3 on the new server. It is this machine.

There are 2 HDDs connected to the SAS controller. What I want to achieve is a NON-RAID configuration where 1.HDD is used for swap and root partitions and 2.HDD will contain /home partition. But when I start setup process I can see that partitioning utility shows that there are present 4 md devices in the system like: /dev/md124 ...

Two of those devices can be removed but remaining ones cannot. I have also tried the GParted live distro to remove those partitions and create desired layout but when I committed all of the changes there it ended up with error. So the new partitions were not created.

Solution

Well, this is how I solved my problem. I found some steps how to remove MD device.

1. In the openSUSE 12.3 installer, switch to the console.
2. List your devices: # df -kh
3. Make sure the devices are unmounted: # umount /dev/md124
4. Check the details: # mdadm --detail /dev/md124
5. Stop the device: # mdadm -S /dev/md124
6. Zero out the superblocks of physical devices that belong to the MD device:
   # mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdb1
7. Switch back to the installer.
8. In the partitioning part of installer, refresh devices.
9. The MD devices should not be there now.

Comments

[NickW]

md devices are linux software raid.

[madlynx]

@raul: add the output of /proc/mdstat to the question

[raul]

ok, I can do this once I have access to the server room again (tomorrow)

[Scott - Слава Україні]

@Nathan Smith:  Thanks for adding the code formatting, but please don’t make things bold (or italic) unless you have a really good reason.