I haven't found any other way to define them in Red Hat. If they're not in the parm list in the initrd, they're not seen (although I actually haven't tested this in a long time, and I should probably revisit it). If they're attached after the fact, though, they do appear to come online automatically. FCP disks are a whole other thing.
There were some early race-condition bugs in udev that might have caused out-of-sequence startup, but with the list in the parm, we've never seen that. We know about the problem because we have FCP-attached tape drives on an old level of RHEL4, and it's an ongoing problem. Like I said, we just put placeholders in the parm list, and reserve the slots, plus we use mount-by-label, and LVM extensively. I haven't looked at Suse in some time, but I understand the mechanism is somewhat different. YMMV. -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Troth Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 9:23 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] Why does one need to mkinitrd/zipl ? (WAS : Broken logical volume group) Ken -- In the thread, we may have not specifically mentioned that list of devices. Nice catch. But ... be aware that the list-o-devices may not always be needed. In particular, once the root is mounted, especially if UDEV is then also available, additional disks can be marked online via magical stuff under /etc/sysconfig. (I speak from SLES experience having been away from RH for a while, though I know RH generally does also utilize /etc/sysconfig.) I find it immensely useful to have the devices listed in an after-the-initrd kind of file. The value of NOT having to re-stamp INITRD for some 500 penguins is ... well ... it's huge. Also, just FYI, somewhere in the history of 2.6, the dasda-dasdp slots became less consistent. What I mean is that even if I code 100-10F, the latter disks are NOT slotted where I expect them if they do not exist when the driver is loaded. Bad bad ... but water under the bridge now. [sigh] UDEV helps. (But this is a whole nutha subject and thread.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message w/attachments (message) may be privileged, confidential or proprietary, and if you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender, do not use or share it and delete it. Unless specifically indicated, this message is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any investment products or other financial product or service, an official confirmation of any transaction, or an official statement of Merrill Lynch. Subject to applicable law, Merrill Lynch may monitor, review and retain e-communications (EC) traveling through its networks/systems. The laws of the country of each sender/recipient may impact the handling of EC, and EC may be archived, supervised and produced in countries other than the country in which you are located. This message cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. References to "Merrill Lynch" are references to any company in the Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. group of companies, which are wholly-owned by Bank of America Corporation. Securities and Insurance Products: * Are Not FDIC Insured * Are Not Bank Guaranteed * May Lose Value * Are Not a Bank Deposit * Are Not a Condition to Any Banking Service or Activity * Are Not Insured by Any Federal Government Agency. Attachments that are part of this E-communication may have additional important disclosures and disclaimers, which you should read. This message is subject to terms available at the following link: http://www.ml.com/e-communications_terms/. By messaging with Merrill Lynch you consent to the foregoing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
