Feature changed by: Arvin Schnell (aschnell) Feature #306321, revision 11 Title: Disk id change in fstab openSUSE-11.2: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Jean-Daniel Dodin (jdd_sysop) Description: That basic request is that one or more simple tools be provided to allow a fstab to be automatically converted from /dev/sdaX nomenclature to one of the preferred methods. In other words, its now necessary to use YaST partitioner to change the fstab entry from /dev/sdx to the veeeeeeeeery long disk identification. This is very scary and is now nearly mandatory for updates. So it would be important to have some utility to make only this change in fstab and no other. If possible add the choice to use and set on the fly disk ID. Discussion: #1: Greg Freemyer (gregfreemyer) (2009-04-01 15:44:41) I believe as part of this a method/tool will have to be found that will allow a swap partition to be labeled while in use. I tried this via the yast-partitioner and it failed (See bugzilla 490817 (https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490817) ) I also attempted from the CLI via mkswap -L. Not too surprised that this failed and I doubt it is a bug, but merely the way it works. I am unaware of any tool/app that is specifically designed to allow the label to be set with the swap partition in use. #2: Greg Freemyer (gregfreemyer) (2009-04-01 15:49:21) Also, the new feature should be available to at least 11.1 users, so that the 11.2 upgrade process can tell users to perform the fstab restructure via a specific tool. Currently it just says something like: Warning Some partitions on /dev/sda/ are mounted by kernel-device name. This is not reliable for the update since kernel device names are not persistent. It is strongly recommended to start the old system and change the mount-by method to any other method for all partitions. #3: Greg Freemyer (gregfreemyer) (2009-04-01 17:08:29) Currently, the fstab could be switched to /dev/disk/by_uuid/ with little effort other than the swap partition as I mentioned before. If the tool were to need to support mount by_label for filesystems, then labeling various mounted filesystems would be needed. I tested doing this via the yast-partitioner and found that ext3 and xfs can be labeled and the fstab updated on the fly. reiserfs failed for me. So online label support would need to be developed for it as well. #4: Rajko Matovic (rajko_m) (2009-04-06 01:39:06) As this is about adding tools to handle partitions, there is yet another for workflow in YaST Partitioner that will allow to label partition without including it in static configuration file /etc/fstab . External drives, USB sticks, memory cards, as devices that are dynamically mounted under /media most of the time, and don't need to be in fstab. Current setup allows to Edit partition information, but after that partition is listed in fstab, and user have to mount it by hand. #5: Robert Stia (bob_s) (2009-05-20 05:10:53) An upgrade to 11.2 is a harrowing exercise. The hard disk designations are changed and no labels or designations are available or possible to set during the upgrade. A separate tool or access to the expert partioner is needed. One cannot set labels or verify partions to be used in the upgrade #6: Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) (2009-07-10 11:59:23) Arvin, does this make sense? Is it easy possible to write such a script for you? Is anybody else willing to contribute such a script? + #7: Arvin Schnell (aschnell) (2009-07-10 12:29:03) (reply to #6) + Mount-by ID has been the default for a long time so I don't think the + problem affects many systems. But appart from that the request make + sense since the hard-disk-rename-tracking of hwinfo fails sometimes. + Also note that not all systems provide information for mount-by ID, e. + g. in VMware this is missing. + Writing a script should be straightforward but I cannot comment on the + bootloader config. For 11.2 the script could use python with the new + libstorage-python bindings, for 11.1 C++ or YCP are the only ways. + Also see fate #305621 (internal only). -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/306321