Re: [gentoo-amd64] [OT] Drive asignments for sata drives

[Bob Slawson <bslawson@frontiernet.net>]

P.V.Anthony wrote:
> Is there a way to fix the drive assignment for sata drives?
>
> Currently in the fstab the boot and root partitions are set and 
> working great. Once a new sata drive connected, the drive assignments 
> change. Initially the / (root) is /dev/sda2. Once another sata drive 
> is added the / (root) becomes say /dev/sdb2.
>
> Is there any way that this can be fixed even when more drives are 
> added or removed?
Use disk labels to symbolically name partitions so that you don't need 
to use explicit special device names.

`tune2fs -L <label name>' adds a disk label to a partition (at least for 
ext2/3 file systems).

Then in /etc/fstab use entries along these lines (assuming you've 
labeled the boot partition 'BOOT' and the root partition 'ROOT'...) :

#------------------- (example) -----------------

LABEL=BOOT        /boot    ext2    defaults    0 2
LABEL=ROOT        /        ext3    defaults    0 1

LABEL=fortknox    /precious_data   ext3   defaults,ro   0 1

# use LABELs for pluggable media since the special devices may change
# MS DOS disk labels must be 11 characters and all upper case
LABEL=Backup            /mnt/Backup             auto    
defaults,users,noauto   0 0

#------------------ (/example) -----------------


I'd guess that there are ways to add labels to non-ext2/3 file systems 
(reiserfs, xfs, ...) but I haven't tried.

As always: read `man tune2fs' and `man mount'.

BobS

PS. This isn't an amd64 issue.


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