Re: hotpluging a firewire disk

Steven R. Ringwald wrote:

Edward wrote:

David Jansen wrote:

I ran into a problem setting up a Linux system for a co-worker. He has
an external firewire disk.
The problem is: when it is connected, the system detects a new device:

# cat /proc/bus/ieee1394/devices
Vendor ID: `Linux OHCI-1394' [0x004063]
Capabilities: 0x0083c0
Bus Options:
IRMC(1) CMC(1) ISC(1) BMC(0) PMC(0) GEN(0)
LSPD(2) MAX_REC(2048) CYC_CLK_ACC(0)
Host Node Status:
Host Driver : ohci1394
Nodes connected : 2
Nodes active : 2
SelfIDs received: 2
Irm ID : [0-01:1023]
BusMgr ID : [0-63:1023]
In Bus Reset : no
Root : yes
Cycle Master : yes
IRM : yes
Bus Manager : no
Node[0-00:1023] GUID[0004da00e0014ddb]:
Vendor ID: `Granite Digital' [0x0004da]
Capabilities: 0x0083c0
Bus Options:
IRMC(0) CMC(0) ISC(0) BMC(0) PMC(0) GEN(0)
LSPD(0) MAX_REC(64) CYC_CLK_ACC(255)
Unit Directory 0:
Vendor/Model ID: Granite Digital [0004da] / FireVue 1394-IDE Bridge LUN0 [000000]
Software Specifier ID: 00609e
Software Version: 010483
Driver: SBP2 Driver
Length (in quads): 8

But what it detects is just the electronics in the enclosure, which is
essentially an IDE-controller to which the actual disk (Maxtor 300 GB)
is connected. So an sbp2 driver gets loaded, and nothing more.

I figured out that it works to do:
# echo "scsi add-single-device 1 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
after which /dev/sda1 exists. So basically my only remaining question
is: where to add this in the scripts of hotplug or devlabel or whichever
component can do such a task.

Actually I have a firewire drive working on FC2 with kernel-2.6.6-1.435.2.3 just by adding this to /etc/modprobe.conf:
alias ieee1394-controller ohci1394

This caused the drive to be detected and the primary partition as sda1 when I plugged it in and powered it on. I added it to devlabel with:
devlabel add -d /dev/sda1 -s /dev/firewire
But on subsequent hotplugging devlabel did not pick up on the added drive and create the symbolic link which mount until I executed:
devlabel reload

I too am looking for the magic incantation to make hotplugging seamless.
BTW, among the kernel's changelog comments is this:

* Wed May 19 2004 Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@xxxxxxxxxx>
- put firewire race fix in (datacorruptor)

So I presume that firewire is now safe to use.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------
  "Spend less!  Do more!  Go Open Source..." -- Dirigo.net
  Chris Johnson, RHCE #807000448202021