David Zeuthen wrote:
On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 11:00 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:But the old names were predictable; the new ones aren't - when I move a disk to a new controller/drive position, I know about it.Uhm, no. You were just relying on a) limitations in the Linux kernel to probe devices in a sequential fashion (see big-iron boxes with tens of thousands of disks why this won't work); and b) the order of your controllers on the PCI bus. Trying to argue it was "predictable" when it was a "coincidence" is an interesting spin on reality. It's also wrong; there's a reason that RHL and Fedora been using LABEL= for ages.
OK, that's at least partly right but you forgot to tell me what to call the device when creating the label for filesystems that support it - or what name to use for access to the raw device for operations like image copies and addition/removal from raid arrays. The underlying problem can't be solved at the filesystem layer.
What I actually would argue is that a distribution making such changes should supply tools to migrate configurations based on old conventions to the new ones. Maybe Fedora doesn't have users with hundreds of machines and data that needs to span years of operation, but a unix-like system should be designed to make that practical.No, Fedora is about being on the bleeding edge and creating a system where you don't *need* to migrate configuration files because the files will be correct if they are using stable identifiers for devices.
I haven't found that to be the case. And I don't see any reason for today's experimental change to end up being the one that sticks.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell gmail com