Linux Kernel in a Nutshell

Filesystems

Linux supports a wide range of traditional file system types and a number of different types of filesystems (volume managers, clustered filesystems, etc.). The traditional file system types (normal or journaled) can be selected from the main File System configuration menu:

File systems
    [*] Second extended fs support
    [*] Ext3 journalling file system support
    [ ] Reiserfs support
    [ ] JFS filesystem support
    [ ] XFS filesystem support

This section will show a few of the non-traditional file system types that Linux supports, and how to enable them.

RAID

RAID offers the option of combining numerous disks together so that they look like one logical disk. This can help in providing ways of providing redundancy, or speed by spreading the data across different disk platters. Linux supports both hardware and software RAID. Hardware RAID is handled by the disk controller, without any help needed from the kernel.

Software RAID is controlled by the kernel, and can be selected as a build option:

Device Drivers
    Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)
        [*] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)
        [*]   RAID support

There are many different types of RAID configurations. At least one needs to be selected in order for RAID to work properly:

Device Drivers Multi-device support (RAID and LVM) [*] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) [*] RAID support [*] Linear (append) mode [*] RAID-0 (striping) mode [*] RAID-1 (mirroring) mode [*] RAID-10 (mirrored striping) mode (EXPERIMENTAL) [*] RAID-4/RAID-5 ...