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

[Les Mikesell]

Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:

>> Is it a user program that has changed my /dev/hdX into /dev/sdX more or 
>> less arbitrarily
> 
> Can you say "filesystem labels"? I thought so.

I can say it won't fix an existing configuration.  I can say that 
filesystem label creation wasn't well thought out for people that move 
disks around (after you've installed fedora on all your machines, 
they'll all have the same labels and the system is not happy when you 
rebuild a machine with a different combination of drives).  I can say 
that the design of solaris seems to take machine management over long 
intervals of time and large numbers of machines into consideration 
whereas Linux does not.

>> - or turns what used to be detected as eth0 into eth2 when 
>> a different kernel is booted?
> 
> echo -e "alias eth0 module1\nalias eth2 module2\n" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
> has always worked for me.

That worked in 2.4 kernels.  It doesn't with udev based kernels.  And if 
you managed some number of machines with multiple interfaces you'd 
probably care - especially if they are remote and you lose access when 
the network doesn't come up after a reboot.

> Have you filed a bug?

Is it a bug or is udev supposed to detect devices in parallel and 
dynamically (randomly)?  It is the same with /dev/sdX devices.  How do I 
know which one is /dev/sdh today?  And If I don't know, even If I wanted 
to use filesystem labels, what would I call the device when I wanted to 
create the label?  (BTW, what I usually do to work around this issue is 
create an md raid device even if it is a single drive with a missing 
partner and use the md device name in the fstab entry because at least 
so far I have been able to count on consistency in detecting the uuids 
and have always gotten unique ones by default).

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com