On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 10:31:21PM +0200, Debian User Jean-Baptiste Note wrote: > Well, i'm sorry i'm really not an expert, but maybe you should > try a kernel with a initrd option. > With a initrd, you'll get somewhat of a prompt and the ability > to modprobe any module you like, it could help you to debug > your problem.
Actually, after some rather extensive web search, I found out that generally one cannot load USB devices as root from the kernel without additional trickery. The problem is that the usb devices are detected asynchronously, so there is a race as to whether they are detected before the root filesystem is mounted, a race which on my computer they always lose. So the trick will be to introduce some sort of delay before mounting the root filesystem. I believe one could do this with an initrd as you suggest (either putting a delay script or just waiting at the prompt manually). The approach I've taken is adding an additional delay into the kernel (copying and modifying some code I found to do the same for a USB floppy). Now for some reason my USB CDRW has stopped being able to write (which is very annoying!), so I haven't been able to test it. Actually, I just realized that I could test it by loading the kernel off the hard drive but specifying the CD as the root FS by root=/dev/scd0, but of course the whole point is to be able to make a bootable CD (which requires writing). :( As per your suggestions, I have been using a monolithic kernel (no modules), and I tried for a while to make one with an initrd, but was confused, and unable to write a CD anyways. It's so annoying! It started out not working and then worked, and then stopped again. Oh well. Thanks for your help! David.
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