[gentoo-user] Re: Can't find init due to inconsistent drive order

[Grant Edwards]

On 2013-07-01, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
> On 01/07/2013 23:52, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> I've just recently run into a problem where sometimes when a machine
>> boots, the kernel can't find init.  This appears to be because my grub
>> configuration line says "root=/dev/sda5" and _sometimes_ the drive
>> that contains my root partition is sdb instead of sda. AFAICT, for the
>> past 30 years the linux kernel was 100% consistent in the order that
>> hard drives were labelled -- but recently that has seems to have
>> changed.
>>
>> I use partition labels in my fstab, so that's not a problem, but after
>> all these years, the kernel still doesn't know how to grok parition
>> labels.
>>
>> Are we really expected now to set up an initrd just so that the kernel
>> can find the root partition??
>
> Where have you been for the past 6 months?
>
> Did you miss the entire clusterfuck debate about latest udev tricks?

No.

> Those names depend only on the order in which devices are discovered,
> and that process has always been indeterminate.

Really?  I've been running Linux on a lot of machines for 30 years --
often on machines with a half-dozen hard drives -- and I never saw
drive order change from one reboot to the next until today.  That's
quite a lucky streak.

> udev used to get in the middle and rename things in an arbitrary but
> defined order, it no longer does this.

How did udev get in the middle?  It somehow ran before the kernel
mounted root and started 'init'?

> We discussed this whole subject *to death* over the last many months

I remember that discussion, but I don't see how it's relelvent to
events that occur before init starts.

-- 
Grant