Re: Making boot process wait for recognition of device
On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 10:07 +0100, Arnaud Delobelle wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have been trying to install Sarge on my powerbook5,2. My aim is to
> have everything on en external (firewire) HD so that the powerbook boots
> debian when I turn it on with the HD connected. I have had some success
> so far, but there are still some problems. I know very little about the
> boot process, so I'll explain it in my own words :)
>
> I didn't want to use an initrd because I never have before (I have some
> experience of debian on x86), so I compiled in the kernel what I thought
> would be enough for the kernel to be able to mount the filesystems
> (which are all on the external HD), namely scsi, ieee1394,
> ieee1394_ohci1394, ieee1394_sbp2 (from memory). Also put yaboot on a
> partition on the firewire HD, after having found with difficulty its
> Open Firmware path.
>
> It almost worked, except that the kernel was trying to mount the
> filesystems too soon, in fact before the firewire drivers had time to
> 'kick in', which resulted in a kernel panic (no /). How can I make the
> boot process wait until the kernel drivers have found the firewire HD
> and spotted the partitions on it, so that the filesystems can be mounted?
>
> My solution for now has been to create an initrd whose sole purpose is
> to make the boot process hang around for a bit before the 'real root'
> can be mounted, but it doesn't seem a very good solution to me. I
> initially set the delay to 2sec but it didn't seem to be enough so now
> I've set it to 5sec which works most of the time but not always. BTW it
> seems to me the firewire HD is detected much faster after a reboot than
> on a power on.
have you tried just adding "rootdelay=<seconds>" on the kenrel command
line ?
Ben.
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