Bug#582002: Modules not loading in the proper order (initramfs-tools: s390 architecture)

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

Package: initramfs-tools
Version: 0.94.4
Severity: serious

(Note: I opened this bug report with a severity of "serious", since it
prevents my system from booting.  In my humble opinion this makes the
package unsuitable for release in a stable release.  But I am not a
package maintainer nor the release manager; so you can argue with me about
the severity if you think it is warranted.)

I run Debian testing (Squeeze) on the s390 architecture.  I just performed
an "aptitude update" and "aptitude full-upgrade" sequence, and among the
updates was a new version of initramfs-tools: 0.94.4.  (I noticed that
Debian bug report 576603 was opened with a severity of "serious" with the
apparent goal of keeping the package from migrating from Sid to Squeeze,
and the bug has not been marked as resolved, nevertheless the package
did migrate to Squeeze within the past few days.)

The new package completely broke my system's ability to boot.  Allow me
to explain the boot mechanism that the old version successfully accomplished,
and then explain how the new version fails.  I have four different disks,
one partition each, that are mounted on four different mount points,
as follows:

   Device   Mount Point
   0200     /
   0201     /boot
   0202     /home
   0203     swap

I have a file called /etc/modprobe.d/dasd which contains the following
statement:

   options dasd_mod dasd=0.0.0200(diag),0.0.0201,0.0.0202-0.0.0203(diag)

This accomplishes two things: (1) it guarantees the correspondence of
Linux devices names to s390 device numbers as follows:

   Device

   0200   /dev/dasda
   0201   /dev/dasdb
   0202   /dev/dasdc
   0203   /dev/dasdd

and (2) it specifies the device driver used for each disk as follows:
-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
 : :'  :
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   `-