Arch Linux

I'll ack this.

I've started using persistant block device naming everywhere. Even on my hdparm calls on boot, as my IDE hdd and DVD Burner tend to swap around.

Makes my fstab and partitions a helluva lot easier to work with too!!

/dev/disk/by-label/root / ext3 rw,noatime 0 1
/dev/disk/by-label/home /home ext3 rw,noatime,data=journal 0 2
/dev/disk/by-label/games /home/iphitus/games ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/disk/by-label/wingames /home/iphitus/games/win vfat rw,users,umask=000 0 0
/dev/disk/by-label/var /var reiserfs defaults 0 2
/dev/disk/by-label/backup /var/backup ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/disk/by-label/media /home/iphitus/media ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/ipod /media/ipod vfat rw,users,umask=000 0 0

James

I suppose supporting/defaulting to LVM with the installer involves quite some work and testing on the setup script, which might delay the 0.8 release considerably.
Maybe defer this (very good, IMNSHO!) idea to a 0.8.1 release, and right now include the lvm toolset in the installation environment, so that people can manually create LVM volumes?
I would then go the extra mile of adding a brief section on how to manage LVM during install to the installation guide. Using labels is basically possible already, albeit it involves setting them and adapting the fstab manually. Again, modifying the installer accordingly to allow for menu-driven label management should, IMO, be deferred until another release, unless tpowa or anyone else hacking on setup can't keep his fingers by himself. ;)

BTW, iphitus, is there a pressing reason why you don't use LABEL=root, etc. in your fstab? Just curious.

I think deferring default LVM to a later release is a good idea, as it WOULD require _ALOT_ of new code. I still maintain that using labels is a fairly important step however, and should be implemented now. there are currently many people having problems with the switch to SDX device labeling, and making apparent why it should have been implemented a while ago.

Dennis: Never knew i could.

In regards to my last comment: I just remembered that the required lvm tools are already available in the installation environment! To support manual creation of lvm volumes, no extra work is necessary, except maybe documenting the process a bit. On the other hand, though, I fail to find the "xfs_admin" tool used to label XFS partitions. Is this missing? If so, adding it would be a good idea to allow management of XFS labels, at least manually, independent of any decision regarding the labeling support through the setup routine. As far as I can tell, all other tools needed to change fs labels are there. Except for vfat, but that's not used by the installer anyway, so feh!

JFTR, I think label support in the installer would indeed ease the PATA transition considerably (which is a b*tch to properly explain, too), and would be well worth implementing for 0.8. See related task #6106.

Dennis: vfat is the one downside to the labelling option. In my experience, under linux, the label must be set when the filesystem is made. Though there could be a tool i don't know of.

Labelling wouldnt be too difficult to setup in the installer. it's just a matter of adding an extra question to making the filesystem, and then have the generated fstab use labels if available. Then we could look at an extra menu to label existing filesystems.

James

I think if you add a dialog, the labels should be the mount point, without any leading slashes by default. for /, it should default to "root", for /boot it should default to "boot" and if you have a folder /media/myfiles, it should default to being labeled "myfiles". just as an example. in the event of two or more mount points with the same folder name, say /media/home and /home, you could label them home home1, and home2, etc. this would of course just be the default values set for the filesystem.

as for prompting the user to set lables, I think a new menu item for this would be best, below the "return to main menu" you could add "Customize filesystem labels" since it wouldn't be essential, unless you intend to add vfat to the installer, which requires you to label it at creation time unless you have a windows machine to change the label.

mtools can change the label of a FAT filesystem, but it's a bit kludge to use

mtools can be used very easily for changing labels of FAT filesystems. But you must first set disk mapping in mtools configuration file (I didn't find option to make it on command line... but maybe there is some hidden one?). So we can do for example this (if you want to change label of /dev/sda7 to "new_label"):

echo 'drive c: file="/dev/sda7"' > /tmp/mtools.conf
MTOOLSRC=/tmp/mtools.conf mlabel c:new_label

Aren't we using persistant naming on the installer now? I don't know about LVM though.

The installer uses UUID's now. If you want to use LVM or other, do it yourself. The installer won't conflict with that.