boot time assembly of raid arrays

[Mark J Strawcutter]

rhel4

I've tried using combinations of md= and raid=noautodetect kernel parameters
along with settings in /etc/mdadm.conf in an attempt to influence what devices/partitions
get assembled into md3 at boot time.

So far, no luck.

md3 is root.  The correct level-1 array should be sda3 and sdc3.  However, sdd3
has raid superblock left on it from previous use with preferred minor=3

It appears that something starts looking at the last/highest disk's partitions and works
down.  It builds md3 from sdd3 then rejects sdc3 and sda3 as not matching.

Tried device and uuid options in md= and mdadm.conf but it doesn't help.

Is there something else that influences how raid arrays are assembled at boot time?

Mark