Re: Partition IDs in the New World TM

Andries.Brouwer
2001-01-24T10:28:57Z

Andreas Dilger wrote:

> It would already be possible to auto-enable any devices with the swap
> signature by doing the same sort of search mount(8) is doing for LABEL
> and UUID.

That would be a very poor idea.
Since different filesystems have signatures in different places,
a partition may well have signatures for several filesystem types.
Similarly, many filesystems leave the first sector alone -
there may be some boot loader there - so if such a filesystem
was created on what used to be a swap partition, also the swap
signature will still be there.

More generally it is a bad idea to start a guessing game.
That leads to systems that usually work, instead of systems that work.

Andries