Finnix Forums » Bugs

nobootide ignored (or depreciated?) Also, possibly root=


  1. Nazo
    Member

    From the "cheat codes" page here: http://www.finnix.org/Cheat_codes

    boot: finnix nobootide

    (Finnix 87.0+) Disables detection of IDE drive detection for the purpose of finding the boot media. Note that even if this option is specified, hwsetup may find and load modules for certain IDE controllers later on in the boot process. This option saves a small amount of load time when you know you'll be booting from a USB/SCSI device.


    I had almost forgotten to post about this, but, I discovered the hard way on the same laptop I experienced toram problems with that nobootide was being ignored. I had, unfortunately, left a much older copy of finnix on the harddrive (but never gotten it to boot together with windows before I had to return the laptop to it's owner, so I couldn't use it.) It took me a while to realize why Finnix was starting up with major problems left and right ending in complete failure before I finally realized it was booting the image on the harddrive. I found that option mentioned on the website and tried it, but, it just ignored it and booted from the harddrive anyway (unfortunately, the boot order does local harddrives before "scsi" harddrives -- eg flashdrives/etc.)

    As an alternate solution, I saw the part about root=
    boot: finnix root=/dev/hdc

    In Finnix 86.2 and later, allows you to specify the location of the physical Finnix media. If omitted, autodetection will be attempted. If a compressed root filesystem is not found on the specified device (see "finnixfile" above), autodetection will be performed anyways.

    I tried this as well and curiously it seemed to also fail. When I specified root=/dev/sda4 (and later tried root=/dev/sda in case for some reason it doesn't want the partition number like that example above implies) it still ended up booting from the local harddrive.

    Unfortunately, I can't test these very well at home since I recently gave up my IDE harddrive for a larger (but not really faster despite what many people will tell you) SATA harddrive. In fact, even in situations with actual IDE drives it is only a fatal problem when an incompatible filesystem image is left in a FINNIX folder, so the problem probably doesn't show up very often at all I would imagine.


    This was all with the 1763 Pulaski snapshot because that was all I had on hand at the time.
    Posted Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:59:53 -0700

  2. rfinnie
    Administrator

    Yeah, nobootide was deprecated (all PCI modules are automatically loaded on the initrd, depending on what the PCI table says). However, root should still work, let me know if it doesn't.
    Posted Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:18:37 -0700

  3. Nazo
    Member

    Root does appear to be broken. I just tested in the 1763 I had and then tested again with the current snapshot 1793. When I first posted I wasn't sure since I just tested root= the once on that system with the IDE (which prioritized over USB) and thought I couldn't reproduce the situation on my current system, but, I just realized I can easily reproduce it all I want here since Finnix prioritizes firewire over USB. So if I tell it to boot with root=/dev/sdb4 (my flash drive when the external harddrive is turned on) it still boots /dev/sda1.

    A thought here has struck me. How about having some sort of "version check" thrown in there? Just something basic, maybe a build number or something. Finnix would refuse (maybe with a boot parameter override?) to use a filesystem image from a different version of Finnix, then continue on to find the next filesystem image after such a failure. That way it would no longer cause problems due to priroritizing one peice of hardware with a different version. Root= would still be preferable since such a process could be kind of slow, but, it would make a good fallback when the user isn't sure what root= should be set to on some systems since SATA, USB, SCSI, and FireWire all get thrown about in a way that can get kind of confusing. I'm thinking something as simple as a FINNIX/version file (easily user-modifiable to override should a problem occur.) Just toss in the build number in there or something even. If the startup script finds that the version does not match the internal version number then it goes on to the next device. Of course, if the user forgets to update the version file it would be trouble, so I figure just a noversion or something parameter could be specified on boot to tell it not to do this.

    Just my two cents anyway. Hey, you just got two cents for free, surely that's worth something? ^_^
    Posted Sat, 29 Jul 2006 01:26:10 -0700