Subject: Re: scsi device configuration
To: Scott L. Burson <gyro@zeta-soft.com>
From: None <kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 02/05/1996 21:02:10
> 
> 
>    Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 23:21:11 -0800
>    From: monroe@teleport.com (Monroe Williams)
>    
>    When configuring a kernel, how does one assign specific scsi disk devices
>    to specific scsi ID's?  My machine only has one scsi bus, and I'd rather
>    not have /dev/sd2 move around depending on which drives are powered up...
>    (I want to hardwire bus 0, target 0, lun 0 to /dev/sd0, target 1 to 
>    /dev/sd1, etc.)
> 
>    BTW, at least on the mac68k port (which, I believe, doesn't yet run on 
>    any machines with multiple scsi busses), would it make more sense to 
>    configure the distributed kernel this way?  Most people seem to know what
>    scsi IDs their devices have, but I've seen a lot of confusion on the list
>    about the scsi id -> device node mapping system.
> 
> I second this.  If you folks want NetBSD to be used as widely as possible, it
> will help if you make converting to it as easy as possible.  If users, once
> they get up and running, want to turn on the dynamic assignments, they can do
> that easily enough; there's just no reason to add this to the hurdles they
> have to leap to get started.
> 
> Personally, I don't think it's much of a feature to have to edit /etc/fstab
> every time I add or remove a disk that doesn't have the highest SCSI ID, but
> de gustibus non disputandum and all that.  Those who want it can enable it;
> those who don't shouldn't have to deal with it.
> 
> I would add that there should be a distributed SPARC kernel that mimics
> the sun4c's 3 <-> 0 swap (bizarre though it is).
> 

Sigh, not this argument again.

I think the argument for config sd* on * goes like this:
You can nail down the first 7, but if the user has more than
one SCSI card, or whatever, or more than 1 drive per lun like
the ESDI-SCSI cards found on some (mostly) Suns, then you might
nail down the drives that might not be there, and miss a few
that are there. 

So you config sd* on * and catch all of the drives in the
GENERIC case. 

The user is encouraged to compile their own kernel once they
get their machine running, and put drives where they want them.

Perhaps putting the "nailed down" lines in the GENERIC kernel
config file, commented out? So the new user with a running
NetBSD machine just has to comment out 1 line and uncomment
7 or whatever?

XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------
XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Sophomore CSC/CPE     kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu 
XCOMM North Carolina State University      kevinneal@bix.com
XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------