Re: disk numbering

[Christian Koch <cfkoch%sdf.lonestar.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 09:55:02PM +1300, Mark Davies wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2014 21:26:48 Robert Elz wrote:
> > Attachment order can't be controlled, but numbering can, but I agree,
> > there's no really good reason to do that unless you plan on moving
> > around devices (or adding some more) perhaps - and then you'd be better
> > to use GPT and wedges and wedge names to keep things constant, rather
> > than relying on wd numbering.
> 
> Indeed its constant disk names in the face of sometimes adding and 
> removing some that I want so an example of how to do that with GPT and 
> wedges would be instructive.  I've read the manual pages a few times but 
> haven't really ever got my head around wedges.

I had never thought of using wedge names to keep things consistent in this sort
of situation, that's really clever.

Wedges can be difficult to understand precisely because they are so abstract, I
agree... they're like an abstraction of making partitions in general. Pretty
academic stuff, but super useful (it's why I keep coming back to NetBSD).

Just throwing it out there: an alternative approach is to use DragonFly, which
allows you to access disks by their serial number, which theoretically never
change. The disadvantage is DragonFly is not portable at all (i386 or x86_64
only).

-Christian