1. Introduction

1. Q: What is RAID?

   A: RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks", and is meant to be a way of creating a fast and reliable disk-drive subsystem out of individual disks. In the PC world, "I" has come to stand for "Independent", where marketing forces continue to differentiate IDE and SCSI. In it's original meaning, "I" meant "Inexpensive as compared to refrigerator-sized mainframe 3380 DASD", monster drives which made nice houses look cheap, and diamond rings look like trinkets.

2. Q: What is this document?

   A: This document is a tutorial/HOWTO/FAQ for users of the Linux MD kernel extension, the associated tools, and their use. The MD extension implements RAID-0 (striping), RAID-1 (mirroring), RAID-4 and RAID-5 in software. That is, with MD, no special hardware or disk controllers are required to get many of the benefits of RAID.

   This document is NOT an introduction to RAID; you must find this elsewhere.

3. Q: What levels of RAID does the Linux kernel implement?

   A: Striping (RAID-0) and linear concatenation are a part of the stock 2.x series of kernels. This code is of production quality; it is well understood and well maintained. It is being used in some very large USENET news servers.

   RAID-1, RAID-4 & RAID-5 are a part of the 2.1.63 and greater kernels. For earlier 2.0.x and 2.1.x kernels, patches exist that will provide this function. Don't feel obligated to upgrade to 2.1.63; upgrading the kernel is hard; it is *much* easier to patch an earlier kernel. Most of the RAID user community is running 2.0.x kernels, and that's where most of the historic RAID development has focused. The current snapshots should be considered near-production quality; that is, there are no known bugs but there are some rough edges and untested system setups. There are a large number of people using Software RAID in a production environment.

   RAID-1 hot reconstruction has been recently introduced (August 1997) and should be considered alpha quality. RAID-5 hot reconstruction will be alpha quality any day now.

   A word of caution about the 2.1.x development kernels: these are less than stable in a variety of ways. Some of the newer disk controllers (e.g. the Promise Ultra's) are supported only in the 2.1.x kernels. However, the 2.1.x kernels have seen frequent changes in the block device driver, in the DMA and interrupt code, in the PCI, IDE and SCSI code, and in the disk controller drivers. The combination of these factors, coupled to cheapo hard drives and/or low-quality ribbon cables can lead to considerable heartbreak. The ckraid tool, as well as fsck and mount put considerable stress on the RAID subsystem. This can lead to hard lockups during boot, where even the magic alt-SysReq key sequence won't save the day. Use caution with the 2.1.x kernels, and expect trouble. Or stick to the 2.0.34 kernel.

4. Q: I'm running an older kernel. Where do I get patches?

   A: Software RAID-0 and linear mode are a stock part of all current Linux kernels. Patches for Software RAID-1,4,5 are available from http://luthien.nuclecu.unam.mx/~miguel/raid. See also the quasi-mirror ftp://linux.kernel.org/pub/linux/daemons/raid/ for patches, tools and other goodies.

5. Q: Are there other Linux RAID references?

   A:

   • Generic RAID overview: http://www.dpt.com/uraiddoc.html.
   • General Linux RAID options: http://linas.org/linux/raid.html.
   • Latest version of this document: http://linas.org/linux/Software-RAID/Software-RAID.html.
   • Linux-RAID mailing list archive: http://www.linuxhq.com/lnxlists/.
   • Linux Software RAID Home Page: http://luthien.nuclecu.unam.mx/~miguel/raid.
   • Linux Software RAID tools: ftp://linux.kernel.org/pub/linux/daemons/raid/.
   • How to setting up linear/stripped Software RAID: http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue17/raid.html.
   • Bootable RAID mini-HOWTO: ftp://ftp.bizsystems.com/pub/raid/bootable-raid.
   • Root RAID HOWTO: ftp://ftp.bizsystems.com/pub/raid/Root-RAID-HOWTO.
   • Linux RAID-Geschichten: http://www.infodrom.north.de/~joey/Linux/raid/.

6. Q: Who do I blame for this document?

   A: Linas Vepstas slapped this thing together. However, most of the information, and some of the words were supplied by

   • Bradley Ward Allen < >
   • Luca Berra < >
   • Brian Candler < >
   • Bohumil Chalupa < >
   • Rob Hagopian < >
   • Anton Hristozov < >
   • Miguel de Icaza < >
   • Marco Meloni < >
   • Ingo Molnar < >
   • Alvin Oga < >
   • Gadi Oxman < >
   • Vaughan Pratt < >
   • Steven A. Reisman < >
   • Michael Robinton < >
   • Martin Schulze < >
   • Geoff Thompson < >
   • Edward Welbon < >
   • Rod Wilkens < >
   • Johan Wiltink < >
   • Leonard N. Zubkoff < >
   • Marc ZYNGIER < >

   Copyrights

   • Copyright (C) 1994-96 Marc ZYNGIER
   • Copyright (C) 1997 Gadi Oxman, Ingo Molnar, Miguel de Icaza
   • Copyright (C) 1997, 1998 Linas Vepstas
   • By copyright law, additional copyrights are implicitly held by the contributors listed above.

   Thanks all for being there!