Re: Should I report a failure to boot?

[Michael Burschik <Michael.Burschik@gmx.de>]

Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Michael Burschik wrote:
>   
> > I could probably use a different kernel, as the problem never
> > occurred with 2.6.18, 2.6.20 or 2.6.21, and this is probably what I
> > will do. Alternatively, initrd/initramfs could be set up to name the
> > disks consistently. Alternatively, I could use disk labels or UUIDs
> > and modify the grub configuration accordingly. But none of this
> > should be necessary because the installation should already have set
> > up things in a bullet-proof manner.
> >     
>
> In other words the installer should actually work with with persistent
> names and this is a release goal for the Debian Installer for "lenny".
>
> 	http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/LennyGoals
>
> (look under Major Goals).
>   

Okay. However, I do think this is a rather serious problem, as it may 
render some systems unbootable. You can't get much more serious than 
that (except, maybe, by eating the user's data). Furthermore, you can't 
expect all users to be able to fix the problem, especially if it is not 
intermittent, as in my case, but permanent, which would require the use 
of a rescue disk, etc. In a production setting, this might also be a 
major catastrophe.

>   
> > I am really amazed at this insistence on a lack of persistent
> > naming. I have used, installed and supervised the installation of
> > Linux on dozens or even hundreds of machines during the last fifteen
> > and a half years, and this is the first time that I have ever seen a
> > device name change without some change to the hardware. It can't be
> > that common, can it?
> >     
>
> Actually, with SCSI devices, I was hit by this about 4 years ago.
> More recently, if a laptop is "hibernated" without un-plugging a USB
> disk then it often comes up the USB device renamed.
>   

I am not surprised about the USB devices, but I never experienced any 
problems with (real) SCSI devices. Maybe I have just been lucky.

> Part of the reason could be newer software (as you seem to imply) but
> there is also the increased parallelism in the hardware. When my 386
> booted GNU/Linux in 1994 each device connected to the motherboard was
> POSTed in succession. There was no way it would re-order device
> names. Nowadays most hardware devices are given IRQs and DMAs and
> they indicate to the CPU when they are fully-awake; which could be a
> micro-second earlier or later than reason for no discernible reason.
>
> Anyway for disks "blkid" seems to be the way to go. There is still
> a debate on how "/etc/fstab" will still be meaningful to the system
> administrator (who is more and more a non-technical user) after this
> is done.
>
> In short, the problem you faced is being worked on. Unfortunately,
> the solution is not fully ready yet and so you will have to use a
> workaraound.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kapil.
> --

Thank you for your efforts. I am fully satisfied with the response I got 
from this mailing list. However, I would like to repeat that I was not 
at all satisfied with the response from the bug owner.

Regards

Michael Burschik