[plug] initrd confusion!

[Carl Gherardi]

On 16/04/2004, at 11:46 AM, Russell Steicke wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 11:28:12AM +0800, Denis Brown wrote:
>> Dear PLUG list members,
>>
>> I have a situation where I need to have a modularised kernel, 
>> specifically
>> with the RAID device as a module.   The reason for this, is to allow 
>> the
>> low level drive monitoring software to work.   I have been reading up 
>> on
>> initrd but find that I am confused, as follows...
>>
>> 0. There are no IDE or ATA devices in this box, only SCSI in hardware 
>> RAID.
>> 1. The RAID driver will be compiled into the kernel as a module.   So 
>> the
>> kernel will not be able to see any file systems until the module is 
>> loaded.
>> 2. The module will be inaccessible to the kernel because, well, it 
>> cannot
>> be loaded!
>> 3. Initrd would seem to offer help.   Initrd basically, if I 
>> understand it
>> correctly, will load a kernel into ramdisk, load the required RAID 
>> driver
>> module and then switch over to the "real" file system.

mkinitrd will make sure that any devices in modules.conf using the 
keyword scsi_hostadapter are loaded before attempting to access scsi 
devices or mount filesystems

I believe the syntax is:

alias scsi_hostadapter modulename

Then run mkinitrd.

Hope that helps.

Carl