Re: creaing new 3.0.4 kernel in squeeze --kernel panic

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:46:13 -0400 (EDT), Walter Hurry wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:43:20 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote:
>> 
>> It is important that you *not* use traditional device nomenclature, such
>> as
>> 
>>   /dev/hda1
>>   /dev/sda1
> 
> Why?

Two reasons.  First, whether an IDE hard disk shows up as /dev/hda,
/dev/hdb, etc. or /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc. depends on which drivers
are being used.  For example, the 2.6.32-3-686 kernel and earlier ones
use the traditional IDE drivers, with device names /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, etc.
The 2.6.32-5-686 and later kernels use the libata SCSI emulation
drivers, with device names /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.

Second, the devices are not necessarily discovered in the same order
every time with newer kernels.  Let's say you have a system with
one hard disk and one CD-ROM drive.  On one boot, your hard disk may
be assigned device name /dev/sda and the CD-ROM drive may be assigned
the device name /dev/sdb.  But on the next boot, it is possible that
the CD-ROM drive may be assigned the device name /dev/sda and the hard
disk may be assigned the device name /dev/sdb.  You can never be sure.
By using UUIDs or LABELs, you will always get the same physical partition
mounted as the root file system every time, regardless of what its
device name happens to be in the current boot.  The same applies to
non-root file sytems in /etc/fstab (i.e. /boot, /home, etc.)

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
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