If the mirror IS activated by dmraid with one disk missing, does dmraid
update the metadata to indicate that the set is inconsistent?
Not yet. You'ld need to use the BIOS management util to do that for now.
Whoa, that sounds like a data loosing bug. If dmraid activates the
mirror in a degraded state, then the missing disk will become out of
sync. Without marking the disk as inconsistent, if the other disk
reappears when you reboot, the bios will activate the set thinking it is
consistent when it really is not, which can lead to incorrect operation
and data loss.
In that case you would have removed the drive and used the setup util
to fix things already. But yes, if you don't, you can get a problem.