Where's the logic in it

[rodgoslin]

I've been doing a fair bit of system installing on my testbed machine, of late and something's been puzzling me, which someone may know the answer to. It concerns the infuriating way in which hard drives are named. sda, sdb and so on. Under different installs, a drive might be sda, in another install it might be sdd. What makes it even more infuriating is that the drives seem to be identified, in some cases by the manufacturer and type number, and in others by the drive id sda, b,etc. They never seem to be named at the same time, so when you choose Seagate ST such and such to use for the current install, on the next page, there's a line of all the drives labelled as sda, b,etcto pick from to partition and install. The only way it seems, to tell them apart is the size. In my case two of them were the same size, one had an OS on it already, the other didnt. It's the same thing in the boot loader, since the id is established at install time. Establishing multi boot seems to be a thing that all distros do badly. In my instance the install of Ubuntu was the only one that included all the OS's It didn't really help, though, since the only Os's that it would boot were Windows and itself. All the others failed. They might as well not be on the machine. Mageia did reasonably well on the ones it did pick, but ignored others. I'm in the thick of trying to edit Grub to chainload ALL the options, and it's uphill work.

[truls]

hda is disk C: (in windows) - your first harddisk
hdb is disk D: (in windows) - your second harddisk
hdc is disk E: (---"---) - your third harddisk

and so on

If disk sda is divided in multiple partitions, it will be named hda1, hda2 and so on
Is it a SCSI disk it will be named sda, sdb, sdc...

Same logic.

In my system setup the disks are ordered this way (sudo fdisk -l):

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 206848 327324374 163558763+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 327324375 488392064 80533845 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 327324438 389351339 31013451 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 389351403 479556314 45102456 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 479556378 488392064 4417843+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

I have sda1 and sda2 that contains Windows. sda3 is an extended partition containing my logical partitions sda5 (Mageia system), sda6 (home) and sda7 (swap).

Hope someone else maybe can simplify or correct my answer?

[jaywalker]

Drive identification seen by the installer can also be affected by how you boot the install. If you change the drive order in the BIOS before firing up the CD/DVD installer you can change the order in which the installer "sees" the drives.

The age of the motherboard and OS can also make a difference. Newer (since about 2009 I think) Mandriva installations can see PATA drives as sda,b,c etc. whereas you might have expected them to be hda,b,c... Older motherboards with a full set of PATA and SATA channels may be identified by the BIOS starting from the master on the PATA primary channel, but the OS may see the SATA drives first and start there.

Finally, plug-in USB card readers can really mess with your mind. On one machine (this one) I have 1 internal SATA data drive and 1 external USB-connected boot drive. These are respectively sda and sdb. The next external USB drive I plug in will be sdg!, unless I use a front panel USB socket, when it becomes sdf.

[argon99]

The thing you are noticing is the UDEV rules in the installation of the distro you are using. Many distros use the same UDEV rules set so it comes out the same. But you know how some people are. They just can't leave well enough alone so they then "fiddle" with the rule set. They believe they are "improving" them but you and I know that this is not the case.

I was doing a test a distros to see if I wanted to change. I do that about every five years or so. I found a bug in centos. I didn't try fedora but I bet it's there as well. It had to do with drive ordering if you do an install with a usb stick inserted or not. I went to the centos forum and asked if anybody had seen this bug. They got all pissy at me for saying there was a bug and deleted my posts and banned me. Talk about having your head in the sand. But this is the case when it comes to udev and religious zealots..

It is difficult to change udev rule sets when installing. But you can after the install. The UUID will always be unique. That is about the only way you can have a unique identifier of a hard disk. I believe udev is buggy and has gone through many changes. documentation that worked a month ago no longer works. And of course nobody took the time to mae a note of that in the doc. A good example of this is udevinfo. This used to give you a bunch of good stuff about what is controlled by udev but it no longer is included with the udev install. But many docs tell you to use it even though it is no longer there.

So do some reading about udev and you will find much of what you wanted to know.

[doktor5000]

A good example of this is udevinfo. This used to give you a bunch of good stuff about what is controlled by udev but it no longer is included with the udev install. But many docs tell you to use it even though it is no longer there.

Maybe you should read newer docs, it was renamed to udevadm, since quite some time.
Also linked from the udev manpage so rather obvious, no?

[argon99]

A good example of this is udevinfo. This used to give you a bunch of good stuff about what is controlled by udev but it no longer is included with the udev install. But many docs tell you to use it even though it is no longer there.

Maybe you should read newer docs, it was renamed to udevadm, since quite some time.
Also linked from the udev manpage so rather obvious, no?

Thank you for proving my point. Things change without any indication of what has changed. When I was working with udev there was no mention of udevadm. And that brings up a better point. Very few things on the web have any way to date them. There is only a date if the person that made the page puts one in. The server should include the last date that a document was changed.

And if this is how members of the community treat each other I will not be using this distro! You could have written that with a little more respect. But you decided to be a jerk. Good bye to you and mageia.

[wobo]

Pls calm down, we do not treat each other without respect. You were explained in a friendly manner why things are not as you expected, why are you not thankful for the explanation but call the others names?
I am sure you could find a home at Mageia (everybody can) but I am also sure that you will find some other place where people think and react the same way as you.

[isadora]

Argon99: really a pity you are turning your back towards Mageia, the community.

[doktor5000]

Now i'm a jerk for giving you an information you seemed to not have found so far and giving you also the source of that information, in a factual manner?
Nice.

[wobo]

You should be used to that after all those years. Give an answer the other guy does not like = you jerk!

[doktor5000]

To be frank, back in the days when i was just asking at forums (not giving public support myself) when someone
would have bluntly told me RTFM! and an adress where to find that, i would have been grateful about that,
instead of even thinking about insulting that someone. Nowadays, you answer questions and try to help and then you're the jerk.

It's not that i'm not used to it, i just don't like doing it at this level anymore. Seriously, now i can understand
why many developers don't read/pay attention to forums, and stick more to mailing lists and irc, and focus
on trying to get things done instead reading (often rather rough-worded unconstructive) complaints and discussing about issues at hand.

Well, another such story (something astonishingly similar just happened recently to me here on the forums, just ask isadora)
and i'll keep out of the forums and doing support and focus on getting my mageia TODO list smaller by working on the various items.

[wobo]

We both know the German MandrivaUser.de forum and these 2 Mageia forums, in all 3 forums cases like this one here happened very rarely, even during 8 years of the MandrivaUser.de forum. IMHO it would be very sad if these few incidents would stop what you have been doing in such an excellent quality and quantity during the short existence of these 2 Mageia forums.
IMHO your work (and that of some others) in the Mageia forums meet exactly what I call a superb support. Don't let it be spoiled by a few

[ah7013]

IMHO your work (and that of some others) in the Mageia forums meet exactly what I call a superb support. Don't let it be spoiled by a few

I agree, doktor5000 thank you so much for your superb support. I am still very much a Mageia newbie and your posts help me a lot.

[isadora]

.................
IMHO your work (and that of some others) in the Mageia forums meet exactly what I call a superb support. Don't let it be spoiled by a few

That about says it all, i guess!!!!

And i know you (doktor5000) are professional enough, to not let you being snowed under.

[wobo]

...let you being snowed under.

This collides with my perception of the world. Is it not "being snowed over" ?
Sorry, joking! I just imagined the doctor on top of a large snowman!

[filip]

IMHO your work (and that of some others) in the Mageia forums meet exactly what I call a superb support.

I totaly agree with wobo on this, doktor5000. I'm really impressed with your dedication and knowledge here in the forum. Your posts are a big reference for me.

Your time and work here represents Mageia values in the best light possible. It's unfortunate that not every one can apply them but we're all humans. Luckily for me I learned that people do things that I see as bad for me are not meant like that. They just overreact on something inside them. So I don't need to take any of that personally. But on the other hand I understand your feelings.

Here is my personal experience. I had some small and some serious problems with Mandriva at a time. When I asked for help about that on their forums back then Adam W. had such technically and personally helpful warm approach as you do. It helped me a lot to stay with that distribution. I felt a big loss when he had to go. I would feel the same if you'll back up.

I'm not able to give much support in forum because of my knowledge and language barrier. But I do try to give back to community by testing and translating as much as I can. Probably it's not a lot but I'm trying my best.

Well doktor5000, I'm sure that many of us are very grateful for your work.