umount root needed for raid root device

[Michael]

Perhaps one of you wizards can solve this problem.

I have a raid1 system mounted as root
7 gigs, 128m ram linux 2.0.32

I use initrd to boot the system and start the md device

At shutdown, it is not possible to umount root, only to set it read 
only, therefore mdstop is not done and the raid array is 'dirty' and 
must be ckraid'd upon startup.  This procedure takes 31 minutes for 
a pair of 7 gig drives -- not real practical.

Got any ideas??  a kernel hack like initrd??

TIA
Michael

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