Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 16 Mar 2001 00:31:07 +0100 (MET) | From | Andries.Brouwer@cwi ... | Subject | Re: [util-linux] Re: magic device renumbering was -- Re: Linux 2.4.2ac20 |
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> I've implemented a patch for util-linux-2.11a > which adds LABEL support to mkswap(8) and swapon/swapoff(8).
Yes, maybe a reasonable idea.
But I would prefer a somewhat more ambitious approach.
My first thought was: why label individual swap partitions? I almost never want to distinguish swap partitions, and just do "swapon -a". In case one wants to guard against changing device names, why not add an option -A so that "swapon -A" does swapon on each partition with a swap signature?
However, that would greatly increase the risk that exists already today: someone has a swap partition, and does mkfs.foo, and it so happens that foofs does not use the sector with the swapsignature. Now this foofs partition has a swap signature, but we would be very unhappy if it were used as swap space.
The real problem is that our disks usually do not have a volume label. Outside of all file systems. The "signatures" that we rely on today are located in different places, so that a filesystem can have several valid signatures at the same time. And we first know where to look when we know the type already.
Design a Linux partition table format, where a partition descriptor has fields start, end, fstype, fslabel, and the whole disk has a vollabel. Put it in sector 0-N for an all-Linux disk, and in sectors pointed at by a classical DOS-type partition table entry when the disk is shared.
(Maybe I already did that once - it sounds so familiar now that I write this. Then why was it not pursued? Maybe LVM already does these things?)
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