Software RAID weirdness question

[Gregory J. Neumann]

First real post here.  Hope you don't mind a question: :-)

I am trying to implement software RAID 1 on my Slackware 7.1 box w/ dual 9.1 gig ultra-SCSI drives, 2.2.19 kernel, RAID 1 support compiled in and the latest available raidtools 0.90 pkg.  AFAICT, there is no patch for RAID for the 2.2.19 kernel.
At one point I managed to get a raid set up "accepted" as a RAID 0, but I 
wanted to change it to RAID 1.  
In keeping w/ the HOWTO, I originally set the raid partitions w/ the 
permanent super-block.  Now the kernel registers the personality, but 
every time I try to "raidstart", I get "invalid argument: /dev/md0".  
"mkraid" aborts on "seems to be part of an active raid", even w/ the "really-force" option.  However, "/proc/mdstat" lists all raids as 
inactive.  "/syslog" doesn't have any references, same w/ "/messages".  "dmesg" just shows a successful RAID 1 personality registration at startup.

I can delete the partitions w/ fdisk, bring them back as regular 83 partitions, mke2fs them and write data.  Then delete and set them up as RAID again, and the same things happen.  I have even deleted the /dev/md* and reinstalled the raidtools.  Same thing.  Even changing the partition sizes doesn't work.

The HOWTO and all online docs I can find are very out of date.  None of the docs or articles I find even hint on what I should do.

Whew!  I guess that's about as persistent as a super-block can be!  This 
really mystifies me!  Any ideas at all?

Best regards,
Greg
-- 
Gregory J. Neumann, E-mail: info at certainlywood.com
Certainly Wood Inc., 13000 Route 78, East Aurora, NY 14052-9515
Tel: 716-655-2769, Fax: 716-655-3446
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