Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Hard drives not detected in repeatable order.

[Michael A. Koerber]

On Mon, 2011-10-03 at 15:03 -0400, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 11:49 AM, Grant Edwards
> <grant.b.edwards@×××××.com> wrote:
> > On 2011-10-03, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@×××××.com> wrote:
> >> Just recently I've run in to problems because my hard drives are not
> >> detected in a predictable order, so my fstab that mount /dev/sdb1 and
> >> /dev/sdc1 sometimes result in directory trees in the wrong places
> >> (/dev/sda seems consistent, but I don't know why).
> >
> > I still don't know what changed to cause disks ordering to become
> > non-deterministic.  I recently upgraded from a single-core CPU to a
> > dual-core CPU.  Would that do it?
> >
> >> What's the recommended way to fix this?
> >
> > After a bit more googling, it looks like this is what disk labels are
> > for.  Never used them before, but it looks like it's time to give them
> > a go.
>
> They have the advantage over UUID's in that you can set them and
> therefore can be human readable. Also, if you use a desktop
> environment, they look nice in file managers.

I have found that use of LABEL=FOO in /etc/fstab doesn't always solve
the problem of disks being reassigned during boot.  I use
LABEL=/Whatever for all file systems mounted on my Dell D830.  The main
drive (most of the time) is /dev/sda.  Sometimes I'll insert a second
drive in the machine (in the side battery slot) then power up.  This
drive gets the /dev/sda assignment.  I'm guessing since it doesn't have
a /boot directory on it the system fails to start.

If I power up w/o this second drive, and wait until the kernel start
reading the s/u scripts, I can insert the drive (during bootup) and
everything is mounted the way I intended.  

Mike