From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Martin Wilck Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 16:50:44 +0000 Subject: [Linux-ia64] GUID filesystem+device identification ? Message-Id: List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org Hi all, Has anybody yet thought about the possibility to use a mechanism like devfs for identifying devices and file systems by their GUID? This would be a major improvement over Linux's current approach of identifying devices, particularly disk drives. In principle, it would be possible to change controllers and disks arbitrarily and still maintain a valid file system in which all devices and sub-file systems would be identified by ther GUIDs (think of the device in fstab specified by GUID instead of /dev/sda3 or whatever). I think something like this could well coexist with devfs in its current implementation, e.g. by a collection of softlinks , something like /dev/guid/disk/[DISK_GUID]->/dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target2/lun0 /dev/guid/partitions/[PARTITION_GUID]->(you guess). where these links would be auto-generated when a driver encounters a disk and and the partition table is analyzed. Links for other devices could of course also exist in /dev/guid, although I think disks and parttions give most benefit. The approach above would allow entries like /dev/[PARTITION_GUID] /usr ext2 defaults 2 1 in fstab, so no need to change fstab if controllers or disks are added/removed in a system. Unlike the "filesystem label" approach, this would work with any filesystem type, and even for entire disks and other devices. Is anybody working on something like this, or does it even exist already? If no, what is your opinion on its usefulness? Regards, Martin -- Martin Wilck FSC EP PS DS1, Paderborn Tel. +49 5251 8 15113