[gentoo-user] Re: mount: "special device /dev/hdc does not exist". What does this mean?

[Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de>]

Mick wrote:
> [...]
> What would be the recommended way of upgrading from the /dev/hd to /dev/sd 
> then?  I have held back doing this because I didn't have the time to mess 
> about with it.  If I were to configure a new kernel without legacy ATA 
> drivers, how would I know what my devices will be seen as in advance, so that 
> I can change my /etc/fstab before I reboot?

The way I do it, is to label my partitions.  If your partitions aren't 
labeled yet, you can do so with 'tune2fs'.  If your /dev/hda1 is your 
root (/), /dev/hda2 your /home and /dev/hda3 your swap, you can label 
them with:

   tune2fs -L GentooRoot /dev/hda1
   tune2fs -L GentooHome /dev/hda2
   mkswap -L GentooSwap /dev/hda3

Then edit /etc/fstab and change the mount points from:

   /dev/hda1 ...
   /dev/hda2 ...
   /dev/hda3 ...

to:

   /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot
   /dev/disk/by-label/GentooHome
   /dev/disk/by-label/GentooSwap

As reference, here the relevant entries in my own /etc/fstab:

   /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot /          ext3    noatime 0 1
   /dev/disk/by-label/GentooSwap none       swap    sw      0 0
   /dev/disk/by-label/Suckage    /windows/C ntfs-3g noatime 0 0

As you can see this even works for NTFS; you use the label you gave the 
drive in Windows.

After you've done these changes, it doesn't matter the least anymore 
what the actual device name is.  You can even move the harddisk to 
another computer (actually I'm doing exactly that) that totally results 
in a re-ordering of /dev/sd* entries and it will still mount correctly.