RAID5 for root device in FC5 2.6.20?
 

I've been using FC5 2.6.17-1.2187_FC5smp for our home server with the root file system on an LV on a software RAID5 PV.

I tried to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.20-1.2320.fc5smp, but the kernel panicked at startup for it could not find the root device.

I found the published initrd-2.6.20-1.2320.fc5smp.img did not have xor.ko and raid5.ko that exist in 2.6.17's initrd and are necessary for using RAID5 at startup. I could not find raid5.ko in the 2.6.20 /lib/modules tree. But I found raid456.ko instead, so I tried rebuilding the 2.6.20 initrd. The 2.6.20 kernel still panics but in a different mode; it did find a RAID device, but it saw a bogus block number. So, I think 2.6.20's raid456.ko is incompatible with a RAID5 disk set created by 2.6.17 (and before).

Is there any way to upgrade my kernel to a later one in the FC5 context? It is not a choice to upgrade the entire installation to FCn (n > 5) because I think it's too risky.

TIA.

How did you install the kernel? Also can you post the fstab file?