[lug] Hardware RAID on boot

Peter Hutnick peter-lists at hutnick.com
Thu Jun 5 05:29:51 MDT 2003


Jeff Schroeder said:
> My question is whether I need to compile the appropriate RAID support
> (under SCSI > low-level drivers) directly into the kernel, or if it's
> okay to use it as a module.  When the system boots, it seems to me that
> the kernel will need it directly-- simply because it won't be able to
> "see" /lib/modules/xxx.o until it recognizes the disk and mounts the
> partition.

It will need to be built into the kernel or loaded as a module from an
initial RAM disk image (initrd).

Obviously the kernel can't do normal disk access (i.e. mount /) without
the driver, but the kernel has provisions to grab an image off the disk
via int13, load it to a RAM disk, mount it, load modules from it, unmount
it, then mount the real /.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=initrd&btnG=Google+Search
might be a place to start if you want to go this route.

When faced with this in the past I have always built the drivers needed to
mount / into my kernel.  This seems more sensible to me.  The initrd route
is taken by distro makers because they don't know what drivers /you/ need.

-Peter





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