Re: USB storage no-boot regression (bisected)

[Mark Lord <lkml@rtr.ca>]

Alan Stern wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Apr 2009, Alan Cox wrote:
> 
>> Why should every user suffer a slower boot and a poorer resume time ?
>>
>> Instead make the root fs mounting look like this
>>
>>
>> 	while(my_rootfs_hasnt_appeared_and_i_am_sad()) {
>> 		wait_on(&new_disk_discovery);
>> 	}
>>
>> and poke the queue whenever we add a relevant device.
>>
>> That way if you are booting off an initrd you can finish the SATA probe
>> in parallel to getting userspace ticking over.
>>
>> On what is nowdays essentially a hot plug system it all needs turning
>> this way up - eg RAID volumes should assemble and come online as the
>> drives are discovered not at some fixed point later in userspace.
> 
> Indeed, something like this should also be used for 
> resume-from-hibernation, to wait for the swap device.
..

It just needs a way to set a finite timeout, so that server room
equipment can auto-panic-reboot and try again if a device has died.

-ml