Chapter 4. Software RAID Reference
This chapter contains reference information about kernel RAID parameters and management tools, including the raidtools package and the newer mdadm. It also contains many example configurations and an in-depth guide to software RAID and the /proc filesystem.
Much of the material in this chapter is an amalgamation of my own experimentation with software RAID, combined with material from manual pages, the Linux kernel source code, and the various versions of the Software-RAID HOWTO and supporting documents. Linas Vepstas wrote the original version of “The Software-RAID HOWTO,” which was extremely useful to me when I built my first software RAID. A replacement document, written from the ground up, was released by Jakob Oestergaard in January 2000.
The HOWTO documents, quick-starts, and examples that are distributed with the raidtools package and with many versions of Linux often contain erroneous or missing information simply because they are out of date. While I am quick to complain about some existing documentation, I am grateful to all the unpaid volunteers who have, over the years, contributed to various parts of the RAID documentation, the kernel driver documentation, and the Linux-raid mailing list, especially Jakob Oestergard, Linas Vepstas, Neil Brown, and Ingo Molnar.
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