[gentoo-dev] Re: USB disks - idea/question

[Sven Köhler]

Raymond Lewis Rebbeck schrieb:
> On Saturday, 23 December 2006 2:40, Sven Köhler wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> so as you plugin a USB-disk, the kernel will recognize it, and it will
>> be called sda, sdb, sdc or whatever ...
>>
>> I don't like that - why doesn't it get some more usefull device-name?
>> Some device name, that
>> a) indicates, that it is usb (for example put them to /dev/usb) and
>> b) uses a numering not depending on how many harddisk there are in the
>> system
>>
>> So for example /dev/usb/uda could be a symlink to /dev/sdb,
>> /dev/usb/uda1 a symlink to /dev/sdb1 etc.
>> (In this case, sda would be a normal harddisk, which is the reason why
>> the usb-device is sdb)
>>
>>
>> So i don't know any other distribution doing it like that. So what do
>> you think?
>> - is it possible?
>> - is it a good idea?
>> - is it such a good idea, so that gentoo becomes the first distribution
>> doing it?
>> - is it a bad idea to differ from all the other distros out there?
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>   Sven
>
> Take a look at the contents of /dev/disk/ or if you don't like that, read up
> on writing your own udev rules and you can give devices whatever device node
> you want.

/dev/disk is tooo fine grained.

Imagine, i would be an administrator of lots of Linux-PCs in an
unversity. What do i know about the label, uuid, path or id of the
usb-stick that the user plugs into an arbitrary USB-plug of the computer?

Well, not enough to use /dev/disk actually:

i don't know the label
i don't know the exact path
i don't know the id
and i guess i also don't know the uuid.

So if i wanted to create a mountpoint for the first three usb mass
storage devices (asuming, they only have one partition, as usual), i
wouldn't be abled to do it.


I will write my own udev-rules then - that's alright for me.


Thanks for the hints/suggestions to all who answered!


Greetings,
  Sven