Forgotten Skills: Build your own linux kernel

Firt we will talk about WHY. Many people have many opinions on that and I'd like to present you mine.

I work as System Specialist. During my work I often came to point that normal kernel from distribution doesn't work. Whole or part of server was unusable because one of these common reasons:

• Virtualization support with combination of new HW


• Missing driver for some Raid Controllers


• Missing driver for network cards


• Security hardening patches for specific systems

I don't remember which of the reason was the first when I must build my own kernel to be able use server or computer with all it's hardware. In few next years another big reason appear.

• New kernel have fixed some performance issues

Now we can talk about how to do it.

HowTo use Grub rescue mode

Sometimes when you upgrade or migrate your linux from one disk to another, boot should hang out on line  "grub rescue>",

what now ?

How To Boost mailserver storage performance using Facebook FlashCache

Few months ago we had performance problem with mailserver storage.

Storage has 3 HDD in RAID5 configuration. Average disk utilization per
one disk was about 90 % - 97%.
One of goals was incrase storage performance but with minimum downtime
so -> no data migration.