On 11-02-16 12:38 AM, Hannes Reinecke wrote:
On 02/16/2011 04:21 AM, Phillip Susi wrote:
It used to be that partitions device names just had a digit added on to
the base disk device name. It seems that this became problematic at
some point with device mapper and oddly named disks, and there have been
several responses to it:
1) dmraid and (lib)parted now always add a 'p' between the base name
and the partition number
Only newer versions of (lib)parted which link with the dmraid library
work this way with dmraid devices. In this situation it is the dmraid
library that is coming up with the device names. For all other devices,
(lib)parted uses the "linux scheme since the dawn of time" mentioned
below. Older versions of (lib)parted follow the "linux scheme since the
dawn of time".
2) kpartx from multipath-tools adds the 'p' only if the base name ends
in a digit
kpartx follows the "linux scheme since the dawn of time" mentioned below.
4) gparted now explicitly tells dmraid to not use any character so that
it behaves like older versions and is therefore compatible with the
kpartx method that gparted has adopted, at least when the base name does
not end with a digit.
GParted uses (lib)parted to come up with device names, except in the
case of dmraid devices. Because dmraid does not follow the "linux
scheme since the dawn of time", gparted calls dmraid directly to create
names following the old dmraid standard (only append partition number to
device name). If kpartx is available, then GParted will call kpartx to
ensure that dmraid device names follow the "linux scheme since the dawn
of time". This behaviour enables GParted to work with all versions of
dmraid, and maintain compatibility with (lib)parted versions 1.7.1 and
higher.
Each of these components needs to agree on what the correct name is or
chaos ensues. I would like to discuss the merits of each and try to
decide on a standard.
Having thought about it for a moment, it seems to me that deciding on
always adding the 'p' is the way to go, since the 'art' just makes
things longer for no good reason, and if you only sometimes add the 'p'
then you can't tell if a device name that ends in a digit that does not
follow a 'p' is a whole disk, or a partition.
No.
The linux scheme since the dawn of time is to
a) Add the partition number to the device node name
b) If last letter of the device node name is a number, insert a 'p'
between device node name and partition number
with the advent of persistent device names (via udev) the partition
separator (for persistent links only!) is '-part'.
So you have
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0WhatAStupidName
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0WhatAStupidName-part1
persistent device names are longish anyway, so we can as well use
something readable for partitions.
My thoughts are that if possible, tools should try to create partition
names using the "linux scheme since the dawn of time", unless there are
good reasons to not do this.
Regards,
Curtis Gedak
(Maintainer of GParted)
--
dm-devel mailing list
dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/dm-devel
