Bug 122906 – Inconsistent dvd symlinks

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Brian Wood 2006-02-15 04:22:42 UTC]

System has two DVD drives, /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd. The symlink /dev/dvd will be assigned to one or the other randomly if both drives are empty at boot. If one drive has media in it it will be assigned /dev/dvd,whether it is /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd. Media in both drives results in random assignment.

Guessing it is related to which drive initializes first, as a drive with media inits faster. Also guessing it has nothing to do with system arch but reported as amd64 since that is what this system is. Also related to bootup speed, as adding 30 second delay to bootup seems to give consistent /dev/dvd - /dev/hdc (ie: both drives are inited by the time symlinks are assigned ??)

Drives are not identical (one NEC, one LG-DVD-RAM), not that this should matter.

Obviously this can be over-ridden with udev rules, but I think the default system should give /dev/dvd to /dev/hdc and /dev/dvd1 to /dev/hdd. Problem is trivial to anyone who understands udev rules but could trip up some users.

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-02-15 04:33:45 UTC]

Not an udev bug. Add a delay if your drives are still not initialized at boot time, or use custom udev rules.

[Comment 2 Brian Wood 2006-02-15 04:47:41 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Not an udev bug. Add a delay if your drives are still not initialized at boot
> time, or use custom udev rules.

OK, if that's the decision I'm fine with it, just thought you might want to know about it.
Both your suggestions would work fine, as I pointed out in the report.
But, IMHO, if a default installation mis-behaves, and requires custom modifications to make it behave correctly, and a /dev/fs system did not exhibit the mis-behaviour, then by definition is *is* a udev bug, certainly it is not a "feature" :-)
Thanks for the very prompt response.