Hi, i'm currently running Gentoo on a RAID0 setup on some Sata disks using a Jmicron chip from an Asus P6T board. I'm using a fakeraid due to dualboot restrictions. My whole Gentoo system is on the raid0 device so i use an initramfs to bootup. I've been running with this setup for some time, but since i migrated to baselayout2+openrc i didn't understand why i need /etc/init.d/lvm to start at boot as i have no lvm setup. Today i was doing some research and some questions appeared:
* Every where says i need "<*> RAID support -> <* > RAID-0 (striping) mode" in kernel for fakeraid to work, but my system still boots while disabling those options, are they really needed? i don't understand why it is supposed to be needed. (Is it only for mdadm usage?) * Is "SCSI device support -> <*> RAID Transport Class" option needed? What is supposed to do? I think raid features are provided by jmicron driver and kernel understaands how RAID works due to "Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) -> <*> Device mapper support ", isn't it? * Last question is, after migrating to openrc i noticed that lvm2 package provides device-mapper tools to manage the array, but i do not want /etc/init.d/lvm to start at boot as i do not use any lvm setup, i just would like to get /dev/mapper/ correctly populated using something like dmraid -ay. I've tried removing lvm from boot and adding device-mapper instead but /dev/mapper is not populated. How should i proceed to get rid of lvm script and /dev/mapper populated, do i need /etc/dmtab to work? Then why would one want to use mdadm instead of device-mapper, which are the advatges/disadvantages on each other? i know mdadm needs an optional /etc/mdadm.conf file to work, and using mdadm one could stop/start the array, add more disks to the array etc But do mdadm need a boot up script to work? As you can see i'm a bit confused about what's best/suits best mdadm or device-mapper and why are those kernel settings needed. Thanks a lot in advanced :)
