Re: Specifying root device in /etc/fstab

[Piotr Meyer <aniou%smutek.pl@localhost>]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2018 at 04:50:21PM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
> From:        mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)
>   | With wedges you would just reference them by name.
> 
> Yes, of course, that's better, when it is possible, but to work usefully
> (as opposed to simply substituting a dkN  device name with a wedge name
> like sd0a) there needs to be somewhere in the partition format to store
> the labels.   The proposed scheme seems like it would at least make it
> easier to have one fstab file which would work whicever device number
> is booted.

In fstab(5)[1] I found something like:

     To use ``NAME'' on a non-GPT disk, use:

     NAME=sb2k5Root/a        /       ffs     rw,log           1 1
     NAME=sb2k5Root/b        none    swap    sw,dp            0 0

     For a gpt(8) disk, use:

     NAME=firstpartition     /       ffs     rw,log           1 1
     NAME=secondpartition    none    swap    sw,dp            0 0

- NAMEs in non-gpt mode are created from device name, I presume. 
Maybe something like this will be better:

     NAME=@root/a        /       ffs     rw,log           1 1
or even:
     NAME=@kern.root_device/a  

'@' may be used to keep consistent "magic" format with other cases
(ie. symlink(7)[2]).

1 - http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?fstab+5+NetBSD-current
2 - http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?symlink+7

Best regards,
-- 
Piotr 'aniou' Meyer