Hello all, It was often asked and discussed on the list about "how to change rpool HDDs from AHCI to IDE mode" and back, with the modern routine involving reconfiguration of the BIOS, bootup from separate live media, simple import and export of the rpool, and bootup from the rpool. The documented way is to reinstall the OS upon HW changes. Both are inconvenient to say the least.
Linux and recent Windows are much more careless about total changes of hardware underneath the OS image between boots, they just boot up and work. Why do we shoot ourselves in the foot with this boot-up problem? Now that I'm trying to dual-boot my OI-based system, I hit the problem hard: I have either a HW SATA (AMD Hudson, often not recognized upon bootup, but that's another story) and a VirtualBox SATA on different pci dev/vendor IDs, or Physical and Virtual IDE which result in the same device path to cmdk and pci-ide - so I'm stuck with IDE mode at least for these compatibility reasons. So the basic question is: WHY does the OS want to use the device path (/pci... string) coded into the rpool's vdevs mid-way in the bootup during vfs root-import routine, and fail with a panic if the device naming changed, when the loader (GRUB) for example already had no problem reading the same rpool? Is there any rationale or historic baggage to this situation? Is it a design error or shortsight? Isn't it possible to use the same routine as for other pool imports, including import of this same rpool from a live-media boot - just find the component devices (starting with the one passed by the loader and/or matching by pool name and/or GUID) and import the resulting pool? Perhaps, this could be attempted if the current method fails, before reverting to a kernel panic - try another method first. Would this be a sane thing to change, or are there known beasts lurking in the dark? Thanks, //Jim Klimov _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
