Drive 'letters' changing, and annoying me

FuriousGeorge

Renowned Member
Sep 25, 2012
84
2
73
I have identical motherboards, and disks for root. I've made sure the BIOS settings and versions are identical, as are the cards, and the slots in use.

On some sda stays sda after install, on others it moves around, and I can't seem to control it. It seems that one day it's inevitable that a mistake will happen because of this. I know this is not a Proxmox or Debian specific issue, but I'm mystified as to why kernel devs and indeed the whole community seems to be OK with this behavior, or what benefit it's necessary for.

I realize I can alias my disks, but I was perfectly fine with using the 'letter's and if possible, I'd like to continue doing it the same way. If at least sda would always become sdj, or whatever, then at least it would be predictable, but the nodes have different numbers of disks, so when sda moves it can become anything it wants, seemingly.

I was wondering what others thought about it, and what, if anything, they do about it.
 
Hi,

as you say, it is a kernel specific problem and not Proxmox VE one.
So you should discuss this on the Kernel developer list.
 
I was wondering what others thought about it, and what, if anything, they do about it.
The only thing you really can do (and should do anyway) is to use /dev/disk/by-id,label,...
(I have a system where not even the sata slot numbering found in sysfs stay consistent across reboots...)
 
For me the easiest wayis to use the UUID of disk / Label. So it's always whenener you change the order of the disk.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/md0 during installation
UUID=25834560-60cd-4a46-abc5-f2711940bbea / ext4 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1


or use the disk name in /dev/disk/by-id/
 

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