(sorry for the length of this, in advance, but I've tried to give
this some though...(maybe not enough/maybe too much!) ;-) )
Luca Berra wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 03:16:31AM +0100, Alasdair G Kergon wrote:
>> The canonical name to use is /dev/<vgname>/<lvname>. ...
>>
>> [~Other forms - dm-N and /dev/mapper/X-Y are internal and ...
>> there'll probably be some further changes to workaround other
>> arbitrary
udev restrictions...~]
>>
>> Different versions of df and mount haven't always retained this
>> preferred form for their output.
>>
> note that on a freshly installed rhel 6.1 i have this in fstab
>
> /dev/mapper/vg_candela--lv_root / ext4 ....
---
Why are there two dashes between the VG&LG?
Does this imply some other random change (that will break the scripts
I'm developing?)...
There is a **need** (especially with a volume manager), vs. physical
disks, to be able to map a file-system, on a mount-point, to the device
that was mounted on that point (if any). Similarly, there is a need to
be able to know where and if a given volume is mounted so one can
operate on it.
Traditionally, the output from mount, or on linux, /proc/mounts, gave
a reliable method for doing the above. With _non_- LVM devices, it
appears to still have a reliable policy of using either the user given
name, or the actual physical device name.
Given Luca's input about further randomizations to the device listed
in /proc/mounts (and often, due to various reasons, /etc/mtab, which
many sysadmins, may have symlinked to /proc/mounts (as suggested in the
mounts manpage for efficiency and consistency).
This points back to what I believe to be the biggest :
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 03:16:31AM +0100, Alasdair G Kergon wrote:
>> The canonical name to use is /dev/<vgname>/<lvname>. That's been
>> inherited from the original LVM1 code and has never changed.
>>
>> *** That's the only form of the name to use to maintain
>> compatibility. ***
>>
>> *** Other forms - dm-N and /dev/mapper/X-Y are internal and the
>> format of those is not guaranteed ***...
----
This problem may need to be fixed in more than one place. But a fix
in mount (1) would be a good place to start, as it's manpage already has
some some inaccuracies in some cases regarding differences in
information between /proc/mounts, and /etc/mtab (and it's concept of
canonicalization). It's manpage says:
When the proc filesystem is mounted (say at /proc), the files
/etc/mtab and /proc/mounts have very similar contents. The for‐
mer has somewhat more(*1) information, such as the mount
options used, but is not necessarily up-to-date (cf. the -n
option below). It is possible to replace /etc/mtab by a symbolic
link to /proc/mounts, and especially when you have very large
numbers of mounts things will be much faster with that symlink,
but some information is lost that way(*2), and in particular using
the "user" option will fail.
====
The above is not entirely accurate at best, likely is misleading:
First, regarding '*1) above, in some cases there is more information in
/proc/mounts than in /etc/mtab. Ex:
Here are the entries from /etc/fstab, /proc/mounts and /etc/mtab, (in
order) for a squid-cache partition:
a) /dev/Home+Space/Squid_Cache /var/cache/squid xfs
defaults,noatime,nodiratime,swalloc,largeio,logbsize=256k 2 0
b) /dev/mapper/Home+Space-Squid_Cache /var/cache/squid xfs
rw,noatime,nodiratime,swalloc,attr2,largeio,logbsize=256k,sunit=128,swidth=1280,noquota
0 0
c) /dev/mapper/Home+Space-Squid_Cache /var/cache/squid xfs
rw,noatime,nodiratime,swalloc,largeio,logbsize=256k 0 0
=======
The entry in 'mtab'; doesn't look like it has "more" information.
Both places lost the mount order (not that important) and both, lose the
given device name. Interestingly, the entry in /proc/mounts shows
details read from the filesystem about how to do I/O.
Compare the above situation to what it does for a non LV device, like
/usr (only looking at 'fstab' vs. /proc/mounts) where I mount by label:
a) LABEL=Usr /usr xfs
defaults,noatime,nodiratime,swalloc,largeio,logbsize=256k 1 1
b) /dev/sdc6 /usr xfs
rw,noatime,nodiratime,swalloc,attr2,largeio,logbsize=256k,noquota 0 0
I.e. - /proc/mount DOESN'T use "/dev/disk/by-label/Usr"
---
The best way to fix this, IMO, is to fix mount's idea of 'canonical',
since /dev/mapper/<manged-VG>-<mangled-LV> is NOT canonical, either by
the standards/statements of the LVM group (i.e. /dev/VG/LV being the
only only supported constant standard) is the only offically supported
path to use), NOR by the definition that the name is not a "pseudonym"
(symlink) to the real device (i.e. /dev/mapper/xxxxx all point to 'hard'
device names of /dev/dm-[0-x].
There is a 'no-canonical' switch to mount that could allow working
around this, but one can't expect it will have been used, by default,
when isn't (i.e. default is to create a name that someone has defined as
'canonical', but isn't by definitions I am more familiar with (using the
standardized name for the device (i.e. /dev/VG/LV, or using the actual
devname (not as friendly in this case).
Do you think this can be fixed?
What groups do would be involved? -- is it just 'the mount prog that
would need changing (seems too simple, but since 'the '-no-canoncal
seems to work in that it uses the value in /etc/fstab in both
/proc/mounts and in /etc/mtab, that might be a good first start.
Though it sounds like the reason why mount is confused about the
canonical name seems to step from some problem in udev -- and really
probably should be addressed as well, but unless there is already a
'non-canonical' option in udev to turn on, the framework to do so would
have to be written first.
Am I over-focusing on this or does anyone see this a problem that is
only likely to get worse as time moves forward?
Thanks... Linda
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