On Thu, Jan 20, 2000 at 12:11:54PM -0700, Eric Sisler wrote:
> >If you're / is a software raid device, then you'll need to either compile
> >in that raid level into the kernel, or make it modular and create an
> >initrd.
> 
> So what you're saying is that it works either way, just like SCSI card
> drivers.
> 
> Either build the raid personality into the kernel and you don't need an
> initrd (assuming you don't need one for SCSI card drivers) -OR- Leave the
> raid personality as a module and build an initrd image.
> 
> My question then is:  How come this doesn't create a chicken & the egg type
> of problem, like leaving the SCSI card drivers modularized and not making
> an initrd image (been there, done that!).  How is lilo able to access /boot
> if /boot is on a software RAID partition and there's no initrd image
> because the raid driver is built-into the kernel?  Or am I just being
> dense, which is a possibility given the amount of sleep I've gotten lately...

Good question.  AFAIK, /boot (or wherever it is you stash your kernel and
initrd files) cannot be a software raid device... it must be a place where
your BIOS can read it.

LILO just stores BIOS geometry numbers about where to find those things,
then uses straight BIOS calls to read them from the disk.

Most BIOS's can read SCSI disks (the EPROM on the SCSI card patches the
BIOS, otherwise you could never boot Windows or anything else), but they
know nothing about Linux's software RAID scheme.

So you can get away with loading SCSI and/or RAID modules after the kernel
has booted (with an initrd) for your / partition, but /boot must have a
normal filesystem.

-- 
Steve Borho                       Voice:  314-615-6349
Network Engineer
Celox Communications Corp

Fortune of the day:
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations
of the victors.  History is written by the survivors.
                -- Max Lerner


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