Unpredictable drive naming with multiple SATA controllers

["agenkin@gmail.com" <agenkin@gmail.com>]

We have a backup box (running Debian/Etch) with thirteen SATA disks
connected to it:
- four to the on-board controller
- seven to an 8-port add-on controller
- two to a 2-port add-on controller
At reboot the Linux kernel inconsistently numbers "sda,b,c,...": it
can start with either of these three.  This is a major problem for us,
which we are trying to fix.  Besides, if we pull, say, the second
drive from the 8-port card, then the drives 3-8 get renamed.

Is there a way to tie drive names to specific ports on specific
controllers?  Ideally, we want a system on which pulling one drive
will not cause re-naming of all subsequent drives.

I know that udev can match drive names to specific *drives*, but this
will not work for us - we need to tie to ports on controllers, not
serial numbers of drives.

We tried making use of the /dev/disk/by-path/* symlinks, but those,
too, seem to change from reboot to reboot.

Here's the lspci output for our controllers:
# lspci |grep -i ata
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family)
Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01)
02:01.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. Adaptec AAR-1210SA
SATA HostRAID Controller (rev 02)
03:03.0 SCSI storage controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
MV88SX6081 8-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 09)

This is what we have in /dev/disk/by-path/
ls -l /dev/disk/by-path/ |grep scsi|grep part1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:1:0-
part1 -> ../../sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdc1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:1:0-
part1 -> ../../sdd1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:02:01.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdl1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:02:01.0-scsi-1:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdm1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sde1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-3:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdf1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-4:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdg1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-5:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdh1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-6:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdi1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-8:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdj1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 18 13:54 pci-0000:03:03.0-scsi-9:0:0:0-
part1 -> ../../sdk1

Thanks in advance for any ideas!