2.5.43 smp (with Andrew Morton's md-fix)
didn't survive bootup.
It produced a backtrace so long that most of it
scrolled off the screen, before stating that
it didn't sync in an interrupt handler.
The machine was dead, even sysrq+B couldn't
reboot it.
The kernel has preempt, and autodetection of
raid-1 and raid-0.
Helge Hafting