On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:40 AM, Alan McKinnon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tuesday 22 April 2008, Mick wrote: > > On Monday 21 April 2008, Mark Knecht wrote: > > > On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > > On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:41:58 +0200, Dirk Heinrichs wrote: > > > > > The other possible way would be to give your devices unique > > > > > names, either via udev or by using LVM. Advantage over UUIDs: > > > > > much easier to read. > > > > > > > > Or you could use filesystem labels. > > > > > > I've used filesystem labels for a long time and generally it works > > > really well. Only problem I've had is my Dad's machine has a Maxtor > > > 1-touch 1394 drive. It seems that often it doesn't get recognized > > > by the 1394 subsystem fast enough to satisfy whatever requirements > > > the Gentoo scripts have for the label being readable so it doesn't > > > reliably get recognized every time. > > > > I have thought about using labels, but never really ventured into it > > (I think I tried it once on a server). Can I do it retrospectively > > on ext2, reiserfs and xfs, or is it going to erase the contents of > > the partition? > > No, it's safe. The various file system tools have a *label* or *tune* > tool to add a label to the fs metadata. Then simply update fstab. > > The fun starts in finding the tool for your filesystems. ext2/3 is > easy - it's e2label. ReiserFS is a little more obscure :-) Finding this > amazing Reiser tool is left as an exercise for the reader (i.e. I can > never remember what it is myself and am too damn lazy to go and look > right now) > > Personally, I prefer labels over other disk id methods. I get to choose > the label myself and can ensure they are unique in my world (but maybe > not in the universe like UUIDs are). If I have to mkfs a volume from > scratch for some reason, it's easier for me to to re-use the same label > than to re-use or copy-paste those long UUID strings > > -- > Alan McKinnon > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com >
I like labels also. I've had a couple of cases where I've taken a drive out of an old system but kept the drive around. Later I put the drive in a 1394 drive case.I checked the drive label and immediately knew it was a drive with ripped music, sessions I've recorded in Ardour, etc. Labels are human readable and I tend to make them quite descriptive. -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
