[This message has also been posted to linux.debian.user.]
I've revved four machines from Sarge to Etch now,
following the release notes and letting it replace
devfs with udev. All worked fine.
The fifth machine was a mess. It's got two
PATA drives, on the first PATA channel on a
motherboard with two unused SATA sockets.
There is also a disk controller with two
PATA channels, unused, in a PCI slot.
Under my static device directory:
/dev/hda my Debian workstation
/dev/hdb archive drive
/dev/hdc DVD player
/dev/hdd CD writer
/dev/hd[e-h] test drives that come and go
/dev/sd[ab] SATA drives
When I boot linux-image-2.6.18-4-686, it sees
/dev/hde my Debian workstation
/dev/hdf archive drive
/dev/hdg DVD player
/dev/hdh CD writer
and panics, no /sbin/init found. Apparently
udev thinks the SATA drives aren't SCSI, and counts
the addin card first. So I changed
the partition names in /etc/fstab to match.
Now the boot stops shortly after listing the
partitions and NIC
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x...
scsi0: ata_piix
hde: ... (the 160 GB drive)
hdf: ... (the 60 GB drive)
hdg: ... (the 48x DVD)
hdh: ... (the 52x CD)
eth0: RealTek RT8139...
Begin: Mounting root file system
Begin: Running /scripts/loca-top
device-mapper initialized
Done.
Begin: Waiting for root file system...
(here it hangs for about a minute)
Done.
Check root= bootarg cat /proc/cmdline
or missing modules, devices: cat /proc/modules ls /dev
Alert! /dev/hda1 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!
Busybox...
/bin/sh: can't access tty: job control turned off.
(initramfs)
This happens with either version of the fstab. Changing
the root device on the kernel command line has no effect.
(Apparently root=/dev/hde doesn't survive initramfs, where
root is /dev/ramdisk or something.)
So I went back to my old kernel. But I'm going to have
to get udev working eventually. I've read the udev manpage
and the three unofficial howtos.
Apparently I'm going to have to dig the serial numbers
or some other unique identifier out of each drive
and figure out how to write rules to force udev to
name the drives the way they have been since 1991.
If this had happened with a paying customer I would have
been in real trouble.
Has anyone else seen this problem? Is it the reason
there's been so much resistance to udev?
How did you nail down your device names?
Cameron
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