Drive Labels (was: Yet another futuristic wishlist item)

[Sean Estabrooks]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:57:46 +0100
Nicolas Mailhot <Nicolas.Mailhot at laPoste.net> wrote:

> It always worked with my home-compiled kernels. But again, I've been
> using 2.5/2.6 for a *long* time.

Ok, you start off by saying that you personally have no troubles making
labels work.   Guess you must just be an advocate for those less gifted
than yourself.

> The problem is anaconda does not expose them, the default scheme is
> simplistic and breaks 99% of the time when you move discs from one
> system to another, so the first experience of most people with them is a
> failed boot.

Ohhh goodie, let me pull some statistics out of my butt too:

The 90% case is handled already.   That is where people do not move
their disks into new machines.   If they happen to add a DVD drive to
their system and swap some cables around to make it fit, their system 
just continues to work and they didn't even have to think about explicit
device files.

For the 10% case where people are doing a bit of drive swapping, 
they can learn how to label their drives properly or revert to explicit
device naming.  I really don't understand all the fuss being made about
this corner case.    It seems some people have spent more time filing a
bugzilla entry than it would take to give their drives unique labels. 

I really have no problem with a somewhat more unique label being 
chosen for partitions at install time but to suggest that drive labels 
be removed isn't warranted.  This could really just be handled as a
training and documentation issue.   

Regards, 
Sean