Re: (i386) Changing the order of "wd"s

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:23:06 +0100
    From:        Ingolf Steinbach <ingolf.steinbach%googlemail.com@localhost>
    Message-ID:  
<c3d290fd0911271523g48538d81q9c8ed9001dbda2b5%mail.gmail.com@localhost>

  | Is it necessary to hard code *all* of that information? Or would
  |     auich0 at pci0 dev ? function ?
  | work, too?

You can do that, whether that's enough info to uniquely select the
device you want depends upon your configuration.

  | Can I additionally have the line
  |     auich* at pci? dev ? function ?

Yes, just be aware that auich0 can only ever be the nailed down one,
the auich* line will only ever pick a unit number higher than the largest
number specified explicitly in the config file - even if there's no hardware
that matches auich0

  | (Note: auich is just the example from the above documentation, in my
  | case it is of course wd* at atabus? ...)

Yes, understood, that makes no difference - but be sure to use wired down
specs for all relevant devices, that is, you can have wd0 at atabus2, but
if you don't specify just which atabus is atabus2 it won't necessarily
do what you want, etc (and if you wire atabus2, you will only get an atabus0
and atabus1 if you wire those as well.)

  | In order to solve the problem described in my original post, would you
  | recommend hard wiring "wd0 at atabus2 drive 0" or should I hard wire
  | the atabus associated with the new controller as atabus0 and then hope
  | that this bus will be searched first for drives?

Don't hope, just put in the config what you want to happen.   When you're
finally done with the old drive you can go back to a fully generic
config if you prefer it that way (but be aware that if you ever did get
a new drive for the old controller it would claim wd0 if you're back
on an unwired config).   Also, from personal experience with a similar thing,
you might find that once you stop depending on the old drive, and use it
less, then it might just hang around working for much longer than you're
currently expecting - unless you're concerned about power, noise or heat,
there's no real point actually removing it before it dies (I'm still using
a smallish old drive I thought I had replaced 4-5 years ago - eventually I
gave up pretending it was vanishing soon, and combined it with sections
of the other two (much bigger) drives I have, and made it into a raid5.
When it finally does die the filesystems will be fine, until I install
a replacement (another replacement...).)

kre