Re: Regression - SATA disks behind USB ones on v4.8-rc1, breaking boot. [Re: Who reordered my disks (probably v4.8-rc1 problem)]

From: Greg KH
Date: Sun Aug 14 2016 - 10:16:02 EST


On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 02:03:27PM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > > > > I have no idea how "SATA before USB" had been done in the past (if it
> > > > > was ever a thing in the kernel), but that has not been the case since
> > > > > at least v3.0 AFAIR.
> > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > People may not run udev, and you can't use /dev/disk/by-id on kernel
> > > > > > command line.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > No, but you can always use root=PARTUUID=, that's built into the
> > > > > kernel. (root=UUID= requires udev or so though).
> > > >
> > > > Silly me. root=UUID= has nothing to do with udev, but `blkid` in
> > > > util-linux. At least that's how it's done in Arch/mkinitcpio.
> > >
> > > The rule is "don't break working systems", not "but we are allowed to break
> > > systems, see it says here not to depend on this"
> > >
> > > Drive ordering has been stable since the 0.1 kernel [1]
> >
> > Drive probing order of USB has always been non-deterministic, so while I
> > agree that it is not good to break existing systems at all, perhaps this
> > is on the edge of what works vs. doesn't work?
>
> Yeah, USB order is known to be random. But root=/dev/sda (when sda is
> on SATA) is very old, and it would be good to keep it.
>
> > I know my USB drives always seem to come up in random order, which is
> > why tools like udev were invented :)
> >
> > > It takes a lot longer to detect USB drives, why in the world would they be
> > > detected before hard-wired drives?
> >
> > Depends, some hard-wired drives take much longer to find than USB ones.
> >
> > That being said, it would be great if the original reporter could use
> > 'git bisect' and let the linux-usb and linux-scsi mailing list know what
> > the offending patch is, and we can take it from there.
>
> Original reporter is me :-(.
>
> Yes, I can do bisect, if required. I'd like some kind of confirmation
> that it happens on other systems...

Please use git-bisect, you are the first one reporting this.

thanks,

greg k-h