Re: Ext2/Ext3 partition label abuse

[Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 03:33:45PM +0100, Guest section DW wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 10:49:00AM +0100, Boszormenyi Zoltan wrote:
> 
> [I had two disks with the same labels on one machine and that caused
> problems with booting]
> 
> Yes, if you have an fstab file that says: mount the filesystem with
> label "ROOTDISK" on /, and then come with two filesystems that both are
> labeled "ROOTDISK", then it is hardly surprising when problems arise.
> The same will happen if you use UUID instead of label but created the
> other disk by copying the first using dd.
> 
> You can change fstab for example with an editor.
> You can change labels for example with the e2label utility.
> 
> Labels have an advantage for example when you add or remove a SCSI disk:
> the label stays the same but the disks are renumbered.
> Also when you add or remove partitions, causing a renumbering.
> Using UUID is slightly more stable, slightly less user-friendly.
> 
> Attaching a significance to the order of items in /proc/partitions
> is a bad idea.

It would be nice if the raid code could do that with drive serial numbers...