On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 10:09:13AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> I would have a file that contained what you found on the last
> boot, and what you called it.

This is something we've been trying hard to avoid. It winds up
causing pain in other ways.

For example, Solaris has such a file for matching devices probed.
One effect of this is that if you add scsi controllers in
other-than-probe-order to a machine, they wind up keeping their
original names, with the newer, lower-probe-order controllers and
attached disks named next.

This is all well and good, until you don't have that file.  Many
an inexperienced Solaris sysadmin has zorched the wrong disk when
they've booted from CD to attempt a recovery and found the disks
and controllers numbered differently than they expected.

Frankly, if someone makes a change, like repartitioning, the effects
are going to show up - otherwise why make the change? If the effects
have to be inconvenient, I'd much rather they show up immediately
when the change is made and the admin can respond easily, rather
than some time later when they've forgotten about the change.

By all means lets minimise the effects (such as by reserving a full
16 or whatever slots for a label type), but not go overboard.  If
someone's drastically repartitioning their system, they will expect
partitioning-related issues for each of the OS's involved.  We
simply can't anticipate all cases, and shouldn't try.

--
Dan.