Re: [PATCH] USB HardDisk Booting 2.4.20

[Wesley Wright <wewright@verizonmail.com>]

> I'm personnaly using this simple patch with success with an usb disk on
> key. It adds an option "setuptime" which waits the requested amount of ms
> before booting. I use it with "setuptime=2500" and my USB works fine.
> 
> I think it could be of a more general use, and perhaps it could be
> accepted into mainstream if it doesn't break anything ?

The reason I took the other approach is that I didn't want to introduce
an arbitrary delay into my startup.  I have varying speed machines
(ranging from P90 up to Athlon 1800) and wanted a solution consistent
across all of them.  I think that you can accomplish the delay startup
through initrd without a kernel change.

Delay solutions don't directly deal with the race between mounting and
detecting the USB device though.  If I select a value to small then I
still don't get a successful mount.

Maybe this isn't a major concern for this area of the kernel though... 
at this point there really aren't any other tasks so the delay should
have very consistent results.

Thanks,
-- Wes