USB Takes a While (rc.sysinit)

Question

FYI to anyone who needs USB support during rc.sysinit
I just spent most of a day trying dozens of modprobe this and modprobe that, trials and errors, with lenthy reboots in between, just to discover: It takes more than 5 seconds from a 'lshwd -a' to the time when /dev/sda* is available. :shock:
Here's some code that finally worked:
lshwd -a > /dev/null
...add as much time-consuming junk as you can, here...
# takes time for USB drive to activate
for (( i=10; $i; i=$i-1 )); do
if [ "`udevinfo -q path -n /dev/sda1 2>/dev/null | grep sda1`" ]; then
/bin/mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt >/dev/null 2>&1
break
fi
sleep 1
# echo "Countdown: $i"
done
if [ ! -f /mnt/keyfile.gpg ]; then
echo "Ok, we probably really failed."
exit 1
fi
...do USB Drive related stuff here...
/bin/umount /mnt
/bin/umount /proc/bus/usb
# rc.sysinit later tries to mount /proc/bus/usb
As always, with USB, YMMV

Answer 1

The computer will sleep automatically as soon as the lid closes.
The computer should start to go to sleep as soon as the lid closes, but you should always verify that the sleep light is pulsing before assuming that it is sleeping and safe to move. Unless you disable it, safe sleep will almost always hold the computer up for a few seconds before it actually goes to sleep.