Proper way to autoload modules (/etc/rc.modules)?

[David Zeuthen]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 22:11 -0700, Pete Zaitcev wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 00:10:40 -0400 pjones <pjones at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > Ok, that one example isn't completely perfect, so here's a better one.
> > If I load usb_storage before sd_mod, the iRiver plugged into my usb port
> > is going to be sda, and the drive plugged into my scsi bus will be sdb,
> > right?
> > 
> > And if I load them in the opposite order?

You've already lost if you rely on device names :-)

> 
> I have an easy answer to this one: "use ub". Mwua hah hah hah ha!
> But in all seriousness, it's a problem which has nothing to do with
> module loading order. Consider a USB flash key and iRiver instead, one
> of them is /dev/uba and another is /dev/ubb. Now, which is which?
> This is very interesting and is something our intrepid hotplug and
> HAL crew has to approach, but it has nothing to do with /etc/rc.modules
> and so I'd like to see some other example.

Of course we don't have to approach that, the answer is simple: Don't
rely on device-names and/or physical position of the hardware. Here are
two reason: a) users don't understand it; and b) sysadmins don't need to
understand it. That's why e.g. hal/fstab-sync put /media/<fslabel>
in /etc/fstab so you can just label your disks and expect them to be
mounted at the appropriate mount point.

I'd wish people would file bugs against software, especially desktop
software, that forces people to rely on device names. We need to move
away from that.

Cheers,
David