On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 11:13:01PM +0100, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > * tbm <tbm@cyrius.com> [2004-05-13 21:02]: > > * Nico Dietrich <nicodietrich@web.de> [2004-05-13 20:22]: > > > LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1 > > > LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2 > > > > How did you get those LABELs? Did you do that by hand after d-i? > > Someone suggested a while ago to use LABEL= in d-i. Can someone who > uses this feature explain exactly how it works? If I put LABEL=/home > in a /etc/fstab, how does Linux know which partition is associated > with this label? Basically, at filesystem creation time (or afterwards) labels are added to the filesystems. AFAIK, this is an ext2/3 and xfs feature, I'm not aware of other filesystems that have it, someone may correct me. This can be done with the mke2fs/tune2fs/mkfs.xfs -L option, or the e2label/xfs_admin programs. From fstab(5): Instead of giving the device explicitly, one may indicate the (ext2 or xfs) filesystem that is to be mounted by its UUID or volume label (cf. e2label(8) or xfs_admin(8)), writing LABEL=<label> or UUID=<uuid>, e.g., `LABEL=Boot' or `UUID=3e6be9de-8139-11d1-9106-a43f08d823a6'. This will make the system more robust: adding or removing a SCSI disk changes the disk device name but not the filesystem volume label. So, it would actually be probably more desirable to mount using the UUID than the label (however the label is more memorable), as most filesystems have a UUID, whereas only a few support a label. I would suggest that in the case of ext2/3 and XFS, when a filesystem is created, it automatically gets labelled with a name relevant to what the filesystem mount point should be, but perhaps in all cases the /etc/fstab entry uses the filesystem's UUID. The administrator can, if need be in a recovery situation, mount /usr by going "mount LABEL=/usr /usr", but the system would normally mount /usr by it's UUID. Hope this helps. Andrew
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