Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 12 Jan 1998 16:41:49 +1100 | From | Kevin Lentin <> | Subject | Re: disk naming proposal & devfs |
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On Mon, Jan 12, 1998 at 08:26:46AM +1100, Richard Gooch wrote: > > The point is to be able to have the different partitions be //location > > idependent//. So if a disk is added, or moved from controller to > > controller, then the system can come up without needing to ask any > > questions or having /etc/fstab changed. fstab can look something like > > > > /dev/root / ext2 defaults 1 1 > > /dev/usr /usr ext2 defaults 1 2 > > I don't see how this could possibly work. If I haven't yet mounted > /usr, how can the system know what /dev/usr is (in your naming > scheme)?
I suppose we'd be talking about a proprietory partitioning scheme - or finding somewhere else on the disk to store the names. The kernel finds the names at boot time during the partition probe and presents them in /dev.
> Er, hold on. I think I see more what you're trying to do. You want to > move /etc/fstab elsewhere, essentially. So each FS/partition will > record where it should be mounted?
A partition should have a NAME associated with it that is stored either at the start of the partition or in or related to the partition table. Those names present themselves (through devfs) in /dev and fstab tells it where to mount. One person might call the partitions 'root' and 'usr'. On my home system I might call them 'scsiroot', 'scsismall', 'scsibig', 'idebig', 'ideswap'. But I owuld mount them on /root, /tmp, /u/stuff, /u/work and swap.
BUT I could pull the disk out, bring it over to your place, plug it in and know what names the partitions would have.
All you need is a clash solution. You could use date last mounted or other heuristics and call them root~1 and root~2 (just to piss off the Win95 haters amongst us :-)
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