Managing RAID on Linux

Chapter 3. Getting Started: Building a Software RAID

Before plunging into this chapter, you should be familiar with the process of building and installing a new kernel. If you have never done this before, I strongly suggest that you read Brian Ward’s “The Linux Kernel HOWTO” (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html), which is available at any Linux Documentation Project mirror and is likely included with your distribution. If you prefer books to online documentation, then I’d recommend you pick up a copy of Running Linux (O’Reilly). Chapter 7 of that book offers an excellent tutorial on managing the kernel. To become comfortable installing a new kernel, I suggest you make some simple changes first.

A good start would be to eliminate some loadable modules from your kernel and include those subsystems statically. Most distributions set up major system peripherals as loadable modules, rather than compiling them statically into the kernel. Network drivers are a good example of kernel subsystems that are often installed, by default, as loadable modules. The sheer number of available network hardware configurations makes this the only efficient way to circulate network-enabled Linux distributions. So, in order to maintain compatibility with as many systems as possible, distributors such as Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE automatically load modules appropriate to your system at boot time, while installing a stock kernel with support for loadable modules. Using modules also helps conserve ...