Re: Is there an alternative filesystem hierarchy that could be adapted to Debian.
Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
> > > I like to know at hand what file is on which disk.
> >
> > That used to work for A: vs C: back in the days of floppys, but what
> > part of "E:" tells you which disk it is? At best you get to assume that
> > E: and D: are different disks, but the names don't tell you which is
> which.
> >
> > > Even though, it would not be bad to call them USB0: or HDD0:,
> > > just a bit more complex.
> >
> > That's better, indeed. But the "0" still makes it unclear (which disk
> > is 0 and which is 1?). To make it more clear, I think it's important to
> > give (as much as possible) human-chosen names to the disks (for that
> > reason I use LVM to partition my disks, where I can label my disks and
> > partitions, although those labels aren't always reflected in the mount
> > points, so they're not always visible in the actual names of the files
> > that reside in them).
>
> That would depend whether you would prefer sequentially
> labeled devices or named devices. The better approach would be to use both,
> so the computer could give a name to a recently plugged device
> without asking you for one or even before you can try to give it one.
You can give a filesystem a label, and then it is visible in
/dev/disk/by-label
after it is mounted.
Labels are not guaranteed to be unique, though, so it's possible
for you to label two USB sticks as "Project Data" and then get
confused.
Filesystems get Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) as seen:
/dev/disk/by-uuid
But UUIDs are terrible for humans to remember, and while they
are probably unique, it's possible to copy them and thus make
them non-unique.
You can also reference disks by their serial numbers, which
really should be unique but are beyond your control, or by their
place in your hardware architecture, which is only reliable
until something changes.
-dsr-
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