Using the InterMezzo Distributed Filesystem
Kernel Configuration
Bill von Hagen
All of the systems on which you want to run InterMezzo must have
InterMezzo support in the kernel, either compiled into the kernel
itself or available as a loadable kernel module (LKM). (A pre-compiled
InterMezzo LKM is provided with the out-of-the-box kernel for some
Linux distributions, such as Red Hat 7.3.) Built-in InterMezzo support
is available in all kernel versions newer than 2.4.5, but can be added
to many older kernels by applying patches available on the Web or by
building an InterMezzo module from source. This article focuses on
activating and using InterMezzo in Linux 2.4 kernels that contain
InterMezzo support.
You can determine if an InterMezzo LKM is already available for your
kernel by issuing the command "insmod intermezzo" as the root user. If
an InterMezzo module is available, this command will displays the
message Using XXXXX
, where XXXXX
is the full pathname of the
InterMezzo module. If no InterMezzo module is available, you'll see a
message like insmod: intermezzo: no module by that name found
. If no
LKM is available, there is no easy way to determine if InterMezzo
support is compiled into your kernel other than trying to mount an
InterMezzo filesystem, as described later in this section. If you see
the message mount: fs type intermezzo not supported by kernel
, you
will need to build a loadable kernel module for InterMezzo, as
described in the next paragraph. If you could successfully load the
InterMezzo LKM, you can skip the next paragraph and proceed to
If your kernel does not already contain active InterMezzo support and
no InterMezzo LKM is already available, you will need to have
installed the kernel source code for the version of the kernel that
your system is running. If installed, it should be located in a
subdirectory of your /usr/src directory that has the same name as your
kernel version. If it is not installed, a package containing the
kernel source code for your Linux distribution should be available on
your distribution disks.
Once you've located the kernel source code, execute the command make
xconfig
to display the Linux kernel configuration's X Window
system-based kernel configuration mechanism. The InterMezzo option is
located in "File Systems" panel's "Network File
Systems" panel. Select "m" beside the "InterMezzo file system support
(experimental, replicating fs)" entry to build this as a loadable
kernel module, and exit from xconfig, saving your changes. You
can then execute the make dep
, make modules
, and make
modules_install
. You will need to do this on both your client and
server systems. Once the module is compiled and installed, you can
then use the insmod command described earlier in this section to
verify that the module compiled correctly and could be correctly
installed on your system.
If you don't have a spare partition on your client system(s) that you
can dedicate to InterMezzo, the kernel running on each of your systems
must also have support for the "loopback device". Loopback support is
only necessary if you do not have a spare partition on your client
system. You can build loopback device support as a module by by
selecting "m" beside the "Block Devices" panel's "Loopback Device
Support" option in make xconfig
. If you need to add loopback device
support to your kernel, you should do this at the same time that you
selected building the InterMezzo module, and then build both modules
at the same time by using the make
commands that were described
earlier in this section.
Next: Installing or Building Other Software »
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