Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 03:32:49PM +, Ken Moffat wrote:
On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 08:43:04PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
Can't you just boot with /dev/disk/by-id/ and an initramfs to not have
to worry about such a thing in the future?
Initramfs isn't something I've ever tried, so I'm not about to rush
into it on the server. Maybe I'll try it on a desktop one day.
Anyway, I've now got it running without ide=reverse, details follow
for anybody else who gets a similar problem in the future.
Can comebody remind me what the initramfs is for in that situation,
please ? From the little I've noticed, I thought the /dev/disk/by-id
part went into fstab ? At the moment, I just build the things I
think I need in to the kernel on that box, without modules.
And for the next person asking this, it seems to be so that you
can specify the root= parameter.
Anyway, I'll try to find time to read my notes to see if I can
identify what happened/when, and to take the box down again so I
can try to confirm exactly what the problem is, if it still exists.
I certainly won't be taking it down until I've written my weekly
backups to tape at the weekend, so maybe not before next week.
Turns out I was wrong about having a SATA disk for the system - I
used to, but then I needed to separate the backups into separate r/o
and r/w filesystems when nfs no longer let me export part of a ro fs
as rw. In the change, my staging area for writing to tape or DVD
moved to the system disk, and the only big-enough disk I could get
locally was parallel ide. So in that setup, ide on a card comes
first.
Have you tried the PATA drivers instead of IDE to see if this solves the
moves around issue? If they work, then you would not need the command
line option at all.
My first thought was to try using libata for the drives on the
add-on card (sii0680), although it's marked as experimental. Maybe
I picked the wrong driver, but they didn't show up. Reverted to
previous config.
Changed to mount-by-label so that I don't have to change fstab for
the old and new kernels.
Moved the main drive and the CD to libata (sii still old IDE) -
specify sda instead of hda in root=, change system scripts referencing
drives by name (for SMART - system disk is again -d ata, the data raid
moved from hd{e,g} to hd{a,c}), now seems to be working but I expect
I'll notice a few things more in my scripts over the next days.
I also discovered that lilo needed the real node specified in root=
to exist. It complained, so I added a symlink to the hdaX node -
panic'd trying to load rootfs from 0307. Reboot to old kernel, run mknod on
/dev,
repeat, booted.
Ken
--
das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce
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Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 12:16:42PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote: There are any number of things you can do when the system is booted, but the only thing you can do when the system won't boot is use kernel boot options. Greg's not removing your option to boot the system using an old kernel to set up a new kernel properly ;-) -- Intel are signing my paycheques ... these opinions are still mine Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this operating system, but compare it to ours. We can't possibly take such a retrograde step. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
Greg KH wrote: On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 02:41:07AM +0100, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 01:15, Greg KH wrote: I'm reworking the pci device list logic (we currently keep all PCI devices in 2 lists, which isn't the nicest, we should be able to get away with only 1 list.) The only bother I've found so far is the pci_get_device_reverse() function, it's used in 2 places, IDE and the calgary driver. I'm curious if we really still support the ide=reverse option? It's a config option that I don't think the distros still enable (SuSE does not). Is this still needed these days? In digging, we changed this option in 2.2.x from being called pci=reverse and no one else seems to miss it. Any thoughts? While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? There are any number of things you can do when the system is booted, but the only thing you can do when the system won't boot is use kernel boot options. This is primarily useful for old systems running modern software, such as old PC redeployed to network, external device control, or system monitoring. Upgrading the BIOS is no longer going to happen, and upgrading the hardware isn't cost effective, but keeping old systems out of the landfill is ecologically and financially sound. The option is a holdover from the past, but so arm some of my clients and their hardware. ;-) And *my* hardware, I might add, I am as cheap as anyone. -- Bill Davidsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked. - from Slashdot - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On 13-02-08 05:44, Greg KH wrote: While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? No. The thing is that you need these kinds of hacks while messing with old systems, building and stripping them, often in recovery type of situations. As said (same as the other person I saw reacting) details of what was most decidedly needed last time around escape me at the moment, but ide=reverse is the kind of hack that saves one hours of unscrewing computer cases and switching disks around while building stuff, making quick tests, doing recovery... If it must go for the greater architectural good, so be it, but it's the type of thing that's used specifically in the situations where you don't have stable, well arranged (or known!) setups to begin with. Rene. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 13:06 +0100, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 05:44, Greg KH wrote: While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? No. The thing is that you need these kinds of hacks while messing with old systems, building and stripping them, often in recovery type of situations. As said (same as the other person I saw reacting) details of what was most decidedly needed last time around escape me at the moment, but ide=reverse is the kind of hack that saves one hours of unscrewing computer cases and switching disks around while building stuff, making quick tests, doing recovery... If it must go for the greater architectural good, so be it, but it's the type of thing that's used specifically in the situations where you don't have stable, well arranged (or known!) setups to begin with. I might be off the deep end, but isn't this what Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt is for? cheers -- Michael Ellerman OzLabs, IBM Australia Development Lab wwweb: http://michael.ellerman.id.au phone: +61 2 6212 1183 (tie line 70 21183) We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. - S.M.A.R.T Person signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On 13-02-08 13:16, Michael Ellerman wrote: On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 13:06 +0100, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 05:44, Greg KH wrote: While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? No. The thing is that you need these kinds of hacks while messing with old systems, building and stripping them, often in recovery type of situations. As said (same as the other person I saw reacting) details of what was most decidedly needed last time around escape me at the moment, but ide=reverse is the kind of hack that saves one hours of unscrewing computer cases and switching disks around while building stuff, making quick tests, doing recovery... If it must go for the greater architectural good, so be it, but it's the type of thing that's used specifically in the situations where you don't have stable, well arranged (or known!) setups to begin with. I might be off the deep end, but isn't this what Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt is for? Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt is for asking/discussing whether or not features should be removed? No, I don't think so. It seems to be a schedule of when to remove features. Rene. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On 13-02-08 13:06, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 05:44, Greg KH wrote: While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? No. The thing is that you need these kinds of hacks while messing with old systems, building and stripping them, often in recovery type of situations. As said (same as the other person I saw reacting) details of what was most decidedly needed last time around escape me at the moment, but ide=reverse is the kind of hack that saves one hours of unscrewing computer cases and switching disks around while building stuff, making quick tests, doing recovery... If it must go for the greater architectural good, so be it, but it's the type of thing that's used specifically in the situations where you don't have stable, well arranged (or known!) setups to begin with. Allow me to add that the demise of drivers/ide itself is an argument for just shooting the thing if it helps clean up the API. Next year when I'm messing with that Promise controller again, the machine might very well be running a kernel using PATA instead of IDE anyway... Rene. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 08:43:04PM -0800, Greg KH wrote: Can't you just boot with /dev/disk/by-id/ and an initramfs to not have to worry about such a thing in the future? Can comebody remind me what the initramfs is for in that situation, please ? From the little I've noticed, I thought the /dev/disk/by-id part went into fstab ? At the moment, I just build the things I think I need in to the kernel on that box, without modules. Anyway, I'll try to find time to read my notes to see if I can identify what happened/when, and to take the box down again so I can try to confirm exactly what the problem is, if it still exists. I certainly won't be taking it down until I've written my weekly backups to tape at the weekend, so maybe not before next week. Have you tried the PATA drivers instead of IDE to see if this solves the moves around issue? If they work, then you would not need the command line option at all. My previous kernel was 2.18-series, I think at that time they were still under development. This box handles the backups for my various desktop boxes, which is why I'm very conservative about changing it. I guess the drivers are stable now, I'll maybe give that a go (depending on time). Ken -- das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 13:46 +0100, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 13:16, Michael Ellerman wrote: On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 13:06 +0100, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 05:44, Greg KH wrote: While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? No. The thing is that you need these kinds of hacks while messing with old systems, building and stripping them, often in recovery type of situations. As said (same as the other person I saw reacting) details of what was most decidedly needed last time around escape me at the moment, but ide=reverse is the kind of hack that saves one hours of unscrewing computer cases and switching disks around while building stuff, making quick tests, doing recovery... If it must go for the greater architectural good, so be it, but it's the type of thing that's used specifically in the situations where you don't have stable, well arranged (or known!) setups to begin with. I might be off the deep end, but isn't this what Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt is for? Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt is for asking/discussing whether or not features should be removed? No, I don't think so. It seems to be a schedule of when to remove features. Well it's sort of both I think. It's a schedule, but if enough people complain that something's being removed then it can be reconsidered before it's removed. cheers -- Michael Ellerman OzLabs, IBM Australia Development Lab wwweb: http://michael.ellerman.id.au phone: +61 2 6212 1183 (tie line 70 21183) We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. - S.M.A.R.T Person signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 04:15:07PM -0800, Greg KH wrote: I'm curious if we really still support the ide=reverse option? It's a config option that I don't think the distros still enable (SuSE does not). Is this still needed these days? My server has a consumer-grade desktop amd64 mobo, with all that implies about cheap hardware and strange/misleading bios options. It also has an add-in dual IDE card with the main data on raid1. It's set to ide=reverse, without that it doesn't boot (the add-ins are IDE, system drive is SATA, so I guess it probably tries to boot from the DVD - it's been a long time since it bit me and I don't remember the full details. That was how it was set for 2.6.18.6, and how it now boots from 2.6.22.18. I think at one time the order of the interfaces might have been different. Certainly, I carry forward a fallback without ide=reverse in lilo.conf, just in case the disks move on my next kernel upgrade. What a distro selects should cover most of that distro's users, but that is not anywhere near providing 100% coverage for *all* the hardware out there. Also, you can force your users to e.g. mount by label. So far, that hasn't been forced on me, and I really hate having to reboot that box :) Ken -- das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 02:41:07AM +0100, Rene Herman wrote: On 13-02-08 01:15, Greg KH wrote: I'm reworking the pci device list logic (we currently keep all PCI devices in 2 lists, which isn't the nicest, we should be able to get away with only 1 list.) The only bother I've found so far is the pci_get_device_reverse() function, it's used in 2 places, IDE and the calgary driver. I'm curious if we really still support the ide=reverse option? It's a config option that I don't think the distros still enable (SuSE does not). Is this still needed these days? In digging, we changed this option in 2.2.x from being called pci=reverse and no one else seems to miss it. Any thoughts? While details escape me somewhat again at the monment, a few months ago I was playing around with a PCI Promise IDE controller and needed ide=reverse to save me from having to switch disks around to still have a bootable system. Or some such. Not too clear anymore, but I remember it saved the day. You couldn't just change the boot disk in grub? Or use an initramfs and /dev/disk/by-id/ to keep any future moves stable? thanks, greg k-h - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: ide=reverse do we still need this?
On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 02:43:29AM +, Ken Moffat wrote: On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 04:15:07PM -0800, Greg KH wrote: I'm curious if we really still support the ide=reverse option? It's a config option that I don't think the distros still enable (SuSE does not). Is this still needed these days? My server has a consumer-grade desktop amd64 mobo, with all that implies about cheap hardware and strange/misleading bios options. It also has an add-in dual IDE card with the main data on raid1. It's set to ide=reverse, without that it doesn't boot (the add-ins are IDE, system drive is SATA, so I guess it probably tries to boot from the DVD - it's been a long time since it bit me and I don't remember the full details. That was how it was set for 2.6.18.6, and how it now boots from 2.6.22.18. I think at one time the order of the interfaces might have been different. Certainly, I carry forward a fallback without ide=reverse in lilo.conf, just in case the disks move on my next kernel upgrade. Can't you just boot with /dev/disk/by-id/ and an initramfs to not have to worry about such a thing in the future? Have you tried the PATA drivers instead of IDE to see if this solves the moves around issue? If they work, then you would not need the command line option at all. thanks, greg k-h - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-ide in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
