On Mon, 22 Mar 2021, Stan Johnson wrote:
> My issue with the retirement of legacy IDE isn't technical. Two of the
> systems that I use are a PowerBook Wallstreet and a PowerBook 3400c.
> Both of these laptops have internal IDE drives, an external SCSI port,
> and require BootX to boot into Linux. BootX wants explicit specification
> of the root device (e.g. /dev/sda4, /dev/hda4, etc.). With libata, the
> disk drive names change depending on what is connected to the SCSI port.
> I'm aware that I can use "UUID=" or "LABEL=" in /etc/fstab, but that
> naming convention doesn't work with BootX. So using BootX will become
> more complicated depending on connected SCSI devices, if any.
>
The /dev/hda, hdb etc. names are transient and don't refer to any
particular drive. That is, they have the same problem that /dev/sda, sdb
etc. have.
That is, if you plug or unplug ATA devices from the powerbook expansion
bay, you can alter the internal ATA (boot) device naming.
Changing the kernel .config can also affect internal ATA device naming:
config BLK_DEV_IDE_PMAC_ATA100FIRST
bool "Probe on-board ATA/100 (Kauai) first"
depends on BLK_DEV_IDE_PMAC
help
This option will cause the ATA/100 controller found in UniNorth2
based machines (Windtunnel PowerMac, Aluminium PowerBooks, ...)
to be probed before the ATA/66 and ATA/33 controllers. Without
these, those machine used to have the hard disk on hdc and the
CD-ROM on hda. This option changes this to more natural hda for
hard disk and hdc for CD-ROM.
Also, the legacy ide subsystem names devices according to the sequence in
which drivers are loaded, which is fragile.
Anyway, I admit that adopting libata makes a very old problem slightly
worse.
> Even in Linux, it can be convenient (at least for me) to have /dev/hda
> and /dev/hdb internal disks and, if connected, /dev/sdX external
> disk(s).
>
We did find a solution for this. You can ensure that /dev/sda always
refers to an internal ATA drive by inhibiting the SCSI bus scan until
after the internal ATA devices are probed.
To do that, you have to set the "scsi_mod.scan=manual" kernel parameter.
Then, after the internal devices have been probed, you can scan the SCSI
bus manually after logging in, or automatically with the /etc/rc.local
script (or equivalent):
# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostX/scan
The main drawback of this is that SCSI partitions listed in /etc/fstab (if
any) won't get mounted early by the init scripts. They would get mounted
by udisks (or similar) after the explicit bus scan runs. (But you could
improve on that if you needed to.)
