Bug#264492: NewWorld (G4) PowerPC d-i hardware detect does not see firewire disk

[Rick_Thomas <rbthomas@rcthomas.org>]

On Mon, 2004-08-09 at 15:07, Joey Hess wrote:
> Rick_Thomas wrote:
> > However, that said, let me argue that it should not be needed:
> > 
> > All NewWorld Macs have onboard FireWire, and so potentially need
> > ohci1394 and sbp2 to access external disks.  Now, it's true that not all
> > NewWorld Macs will have actual firewire disks, and loading those modules
> > should probably be optional, not default.  So... why not just always
> > make the ohci1394 and sbp2 modules available as an option in one of the
> > hardware discovery menus whenever we're installing on a NewWorld Mac?
> > 
> > Or is there something about the hardware discovery process that I don't
> > know (very likely) that makes that difficult or unpalatable?  Like, it's
> > totally driven by [the equivalent of] the output of lspci?  Is there a
> > design/implementation document somewhere that describes this process? 
> > I'd be interested in reading it, if it's available.
> 
> Of course we could always load this module on newworld macs if we decided
> that was the best way. As I'm not a mac person, I really can't say.
> Personally, I perfer being cautious about loading hardware drivers
> unconditionally, since there are often edge cases where they hang a
> machine. And while perhaps all newworld macs have firewire today, it's
> hard to say if that will be the case tomorrow. The nice thing about the
> pci bus is it lets us eliminate the guesswork. Anyway, adding the pci id
> is the quickest fix at this point.

OK, as I said, output of lspci and lspci -n will be sent tonight, when I
can get my hands on the machine in question.

Still, perhaps I wasn't clear.  I was suggesting only that the modules
be made available as a user-choice option in one of the "discovering
hardware" menus -- not that they be loaded always.

I agree that future Macs cannot be guaranteed to have built-in onboard
firewire, or they may have firewire controllers that don't conform to
the ohci1394 specs and freeze up when presented with ohci1394 commands. 
So make it optional, but make it a standard option.


Rick