hda / hde - Debian can't seem to make its mind up

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Steven Maddox (Architect) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have mentioned this before but in a slightly different context and I
> can't remember what was said.
>
> I have a Compaq ProLian DL320 server and Debian seems to have a little
> problem
> I have installed Debian twice on this server... heres the details...
>
> 1st Install (Etch r2)
>> When installing it thought the disk was hda
>> When booting first time it became hde and I had to change fstab/grub
>
> 2nd Install (Etch r0)
>> When installing it thought it was hde
>> When booting it was hde! - I thought, yey! Etch r0 has fixed it!
>
> However sometimes when I boot up, it can occasionally think it is hda -
> and I have to restart for it to realise (I can't be doing altering the
> grub/fstab every time, there needs to be consistency)
>
> Are there any known issues with Debian or this particular model? (latest
> bios is installed) - or perhaps any solutions or workarounds people know
> of?
>

Yes, use LABEL instead of the name of the device. You can assign a
label to a partition with the e2label command (which is part of the
e2fsprogs package) and then subsequently use that label to boot rather
than the device name. That should solve your problem. This is of
course if you are using a ext3 file system. You didn't specify.

Another alternative, is to do with the newer versions of the kernel do
and use UUID, but I don't know which kernel or which udev you are using,
nor do I really know enough about that to explain how.

Joe
- --
Registerd Linux user #443289 at http://counter.li.org/
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Noticed the same thing with lenny on a dell poweredge 650 server!
hda and hde seemed to be getting toggled between the hard disk and the cdrom drive. So got the cdrom drive disconnected, but it still randomly sets /dev/hde instead of /dev/hda to the hard disk and gets stuck trying to mount the root file system!

Does anyone know as to why this might happen?

The root partition is reiserfs, so can't go with labels. Any workarounds other than going with uuids?