Can you disable automatic mdadm startup?

Question

I am creating a RAID 10 array over four iSCSI targets. I want to control everything manually though so I can run it through heartbeat. I've unlinked the open-iscsi and mdadm scripts from /etc/rc#.d/ but the raid array is still recreated on boot up. Once the server boots up I have to do a mdadm --stop /dev/md0 and then /etc/init.d/mdadm stop to make sure it doesn't fire it up again. I commented out my array from /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf but it just created a new one later. How can I put mdadm into a manual process so it only attempts to start or rebuild the array when I tell it to?

Answer 1

/etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

   # by default, scan all partitions (/proc/partitions) for MD superblocks.
   # alternatively, specify devices to scan, using wildcards if desired.
  DEVICE partitions

what about scan something like /dev/null ? I mean some devices without superblocks. So mdadm cant find arrays.

Answer 2

You don't mention what flavour of Linux you are using (I'm assuming Linux?). You can control startup behaviour on debian/ubuntu with

dpkg-reconfigure mdadm