Hi,

How do check whether the system had built-in raid support in the kernel or it is loaded as modules.

One way would be to go to /usr/src/linux
and type 'make menuconfig' or whatever kernel compile menu you like. Then look to see if the the raid components are built into the kernel. If you seen an 'M' next to the particular support option, then you know it's loaded as a module.

There is no /usr/src/linux directory

# ls /usr/src
RPM/


when I type 'make menuconfig', it gives the message below:
# make menuconfig
make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop.

What distribution are you using?

It looks like you don't have the kernel source files installed. That's why /usr/src/linux doesn't exist and why make menuconfig doesn't work.

You'd need to install the kernel source code to do the steps I described in the previous post.

BTW why do you want to know if it's compiled as a module or not?

You don't need the kernel sources to check if your current kernel supports raid.

What sort of raid support do you mean? Software raid or support for a particular raid card? The softraid modules are called md-mod raid0, raid1, raid5,... just try modprobing them. For raid controller support you'd need to know the module name that supports the particular card you need. Many distros place the kernel config in /boot under the name of config.<kernel version> You can look through there to see if support is compiled in should the modprobe fail. Or else you might find the kernel config under /proc/config.gz

I am using Mandrake 10.1 . I want to set up software RAID 1 and it is better to have RAID support built in the kernel.

From the config-2.6.8.1-12mdk, it indicated that my system with RAID support loaded as module and not built in kernel. I need to recompile the kernel to have RAID support

> cat /boot/config-2.6.8.1-12mdk


#
# Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)
#
CONFIG_MD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_MD=y
CONFIG_MD_LINEAR=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID0=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID1=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID5=m
CONFIG_MD_RAID6=m
CONFIG_MD_MULTIPATH=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=m
CONFIG_DM_CRYPT=m
CONFIG_DM_SNAPSHOT=m
CONFIG_DM_MIRROR=m
CONFIG_DM_ZERO=m