Re: should an end user stick to a kernel with an initrd?
On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Regid Ichira <regid23@nt1.in> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 19:06:43 -0400, Tom H wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Regid Ichira <regid23@nt1.in> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Fri, 27 Sep 2013 13:34:56 -0400, Tom H wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 3:12 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 2013-09-26 at 19:07 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Traditional device names, such as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb,
>>>>>> (and therefore the partitions on those devices, such
>>>>>> as /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1, etc.) are not assigned in a predictable
>>>>>> manner anymore. This device name assignment can change from one boot
>>>>>> to the next.
>>>>>
>>>>> This never happened on my machine.
>>>>
>>>> This won't happen if you have just one disk. ;)
>>>>
>>>> On a more serious note, do you really think that all the people
>>>> maintaining distributions thought "using sdX is far too simple and
>>>> easy, let's start using human-non-parsable UUIDs?!"
>>>
>>> 1. Saying traditional disks names not siigned in a predictable manner
>>> seem to contradict the fact that one can write
>>> root=/dev/hdd3
>>> in the kernel command line, such as in lilo.
>>> 2. I have 2 disks. It never happened to me.
>>> 3. In the old days, the way you physically attached the disks, be it
>>> IDE or SCSI, completely determined their enumeration in the hd
>>> and sd name space. I think that has not changed by newer kernels.
>>> I guess Sievers was reffering to that fact when he
>>> also points out that the device naming policy is
>>> already in the kernel
>>> Quote taken from https://lwn.net/Articles/331818/.
>>> Some of the comments in that URL seem to me supporting my claim.
>>> 4. I think that the LABEL mechanism of /etc/fstab is different,
>>> predated, and more rigid, from that of a UUID. Again, it seem to
>>> me supported by some of the comments in
>>> https://lwn.net/Articles/331818/.
>>> 5. Indeed, network interface enumeration was not that solid, and
>>> required user space tools to remedie.
>>
>> As I said, more or less, in a reply to Ralf, can you guarantee that no
>> other Linux user will have a disk renamed?
>
> If I understand
> http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apcs04.html.en correctly,
> then yes. I can guarantee, as long as you don't have udev rules, or
> other deliberate commands for renaming, including, perhaps by initrd,
> that no other Linux user will have a disk renamed. Hotplug devices
> might differ. I am not sure if hotplug devices actually require such
> rules to guarantee stable names.
Since you're so convinced of this why don't you file a bug against
fstab for it to default to kernel device names rather than filesystem
UUIDs?
Reply to: