I was trying to set up a RAID 1 system using precompiled 2.6 kernels.

But I discovered an issue: raid device are not auto-recognized on boot, because raid is compiled as module and modules can't be loaded before mounting /

So I tried recompiling the kernel adding raid as built-in item instead of module, and now the arrays are autostarted on boot.

On all 2.4 precompiled kernels (from 2.24) raid was always built-in.
Why this change?

Bye all

less /boot/README.initrd

I forgot to mention it in the first post.

I tried loading via initrd the following modules: ext3, jbd, md, raid1.

After the boot (from a non-raid partition) the modules are correctly loaded, but the arrays aren't started.

launching mdadm -As I get all arrays working, WITHOUT HAVING ANY OTHER MODULE LOADED (I double checked lsmod)

Partitions are correctly marked as fd.

I found that the only way to have arrays autostarted is to compile raid built-in in the kernel.

So the question is not how to autostart arrays, but why raid is a module in the 2.6 when it was builtin in 2.4, or why loading md and raid1 via initrd arrays aren't autostarted.

Maybe I'm doing it in the wrong way.

I can suppose that neverthless modules are loaded via initrd they went loaded after recognizing fd partitions.

In facts the autostart of arrays is done very soon in the boot process.

I don't played too much with lilo, maybe there's something other to modify??

I'd like to have any feedback from anyone has a working system with raid loaded via initrd...