I recently acquired a USB HardDisk and it seems that the drivers for USB
load after attempts to mount the root partition.  I saw one patch that
just put the root mount code into an endless loop, but didn't like this
solution.

What I've done here is add another kernel config option which indicates
if you have a USB device you with to boot.  If you do then it changes
the module_init's in drivers/usb/usb.c and drivers/usb/storage/usb.c to
__initcall's.  The config option is only enabled when you've selected
"Y" for the USB Mass Storage Device.

My tests show that it seems to work, and I haven't noticed any odd side
affects by initcall-ing the usb devices (concern over this topic is why
I enabled it for static USB MSD only).

Does this seem a reasonable solution, or does anyone have something more
elegant?

-- Wes