Linux is not about choice [was Re: Fedora too cutting edge?]

[David Zeuthen]

On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 13:44 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > Uhm. Did you *even* look at /dev/disk? There's by-path, by-uuid,
> > by-label and so forth.
> 
> I'm looking, but I don't see consistency anywhere across linux kernels. 
>   by-uuid, by-label seem to only refer to things that have been created 
> by some other access, by-id doen't always appear, and by-path varies 
> across kernels as the device drivers have changed.  Where is something 
> better than device driver major/minor numbers would have been?

You should use by-uuid. If you see other entries change according to
what kernel you are using this should be reported on the udev list 

 linux-hotplug at vger.kernel.org

and please follow up there with other questions too (it's getting
off-topic in this thread and even this list). Thanks.

> Do you expect this to be standardized only for Linux or is there hope 
> for a Posix specification for device name conventions?

No, I don't expect this to be standardized outside Linux.

> > There's nothing experimental about the path modern Linux is going in
> > wrt. to device naming. If you had bothered you will fine that more and
> > more device classes, including the infamous video4linux camp, is moving
> > to persistent device names. 
> 
> If I had bothered to what?  Is this documented somewhere?  Is it 
> version-specific to fedora?

That's like asking if all the sysfs are documented somewhere and the
answer to questions like that are normally "no, it's self-evident" (and
I agree it's not always the case) or "look at the source". Anyway, by
all means, send patches to the udev list with docs if you think it's
required.

> > It's true, however, that Fedora is
> > super-reluctant on taking advantage of what happens upstream and keep
> > using pre-2000 technology. That's, very slowly, changing though.
> 
> Much of my data is on filesystems created before 2000.  Will changing 
> the names used to reference them make them work better?

This question doesn't really make sense to me. What I'm telling you is
to use persistent device names. That entails having UUID and/or labels
on your file systems. So if you don't have that, by all means, go ahead
and create them and things will start appearing under /dev/disk.

Anyway, please use the udev list for further questions. This thread is
getting too long. Thanks.

      David