.\" -*- nroff -*-
.\" Copyright Piergiorgio Sartor and others.
.\"   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
.\"   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
.\"   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
.\"   (at your option) any later version.
.\" See file COPYING in distribution for details.
.TH RAID6CHECK 8 "" v1.0.0
.SH NAME
raid6check \- check MD RAID6 device for errors
.I aka
Linux Software RAID

.SH SYNOPSIS

.BI raid6check " <raid6 device> <start stripe> <number of stripes>"

.SH DESCRIPTION
RAID6 devices in which one single component drive has errors can use
the double parity in order to find out which component drive.
The "raid6check" tool checks, for each stripe, the double parity
consistency, reports mismatches and, if possible, which
component drive has the mismatch.
Since it works at stripe level, it can report different drives with
mismatches at different stripes.

"raid6check" requires a non-degraded RAID6 MD device as first
parameter, a starting stripe (usually 0) and the number of stripes
to be checked.
If this third parameter is also 0, it will check the array up to
the end.

"raid6check" will start printing information about the RAID6, then
for each stripe, it will report the parity rotation status.
In case of parity mismatches, "raid6check" reports, if possible,
which component drive could be responsible. Otherwise it reports
that it is not possible to find the component drive.

If the given MD device is not a RAID6, "raid6check" will, of
course, not continue.

If the RAID6 MD device is degraded, "raid6check" will report
an error and it will not proceed further.

No write operations are performed on the array or the components.
Furthermore, the checked array can be online and in use during
the operation of "raid6check".

.SH EXAMPLES

.B "  raid6check /dev/md0 0 0"
.br
This will check /dev/md0 from start to end.

.B "  raid6check /dev/md3 0 1"
.br
This will check the first stripe of /dev/md3.

.B "  raid6check /dev/md1 1000 0"
.br
This will check /dev/md1 from stripe 1000 up to the end.

.B "  raid6check /dev/m127 128 256"
.br
This will check 256 stripes of /dev/md127 starting from stripe 128.

.B "  raid6check /dev/md0 0 0 | grep -i error > md0_err.log"
.br
This will check /dev/md0 completely and create a log file only
with errors, if any.

.SH FILES

"raid6check" uses directly the component drives as found in /dev.
Furthermore, the sysfs interface is needed in order to find out
the RAID6 parameters.

.SH BUGS
Negative parameters can lead to unexpected results.

It is not clear what will happen if the RAID6 MD device gets
degraded during the check.

.PP
The latest version of
.I raid6check
should always be available from
.IP
.B http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
.PP
Related man pages:
.PP
.IR mdadm (8)
.IR mdmon (8),
.IR mdadm.conf (5),
.IR md (4).