Problems booting from SCSI disk (with LVM2)

[Urs Thuermann <urs@isnogud.escape.de>]

I have installed Debian testing using the binary-1 CD.  After fiddling
with the grub install (see below [*]) the kernel-2.6.15-1-i686-smp
boots and starts from the initramfs.  The initramfs initializes among
other things the SCSI subsystem (AIC7899), device mapper and LVM2, and
my ethernet card (two port adaptec, starfire driver).  But mounting
the real root device fails, because of the order of initializations,
AFAICS.

I see kernel messages for the initialization of the SCSI host
controller, but before this completes, the kernel prints messages for
the initialization of the NIC, then I see a message that mounting
/dev/vg0/root failed, then the messages for the initialization of the
SCSI host controller complete followed ty the kernel message for
recognized partitions on /dev/sda.

It seems that the modprobe for the SCSI host controller starts
correctly before LVM2 activation and mounting the root fs, but the
modprobe seems to return before the SCSI host controller
initialization is complete, so the LVM2 and mount start too early.  I
haven't see this behavior with Linux-2.4 and modutils.  Has this
changed with Linux-2.6 and module-init-tools?  How can I change this?



[*] I had to change the devices.map file and then do a
    chroot /target grub-install "(hd0)" on the shell in console 2 to
    fix this.
    Selecting "Install GRUB boot loader" from the installer always
    overwrote my changed devices.map file.  There should be an easier
    way to do this.


urs