hard drive mount letters changed AGAIN

[Mark]

I installed the new kernel update on my feisty machine, and upon reboot, my harddrives chaged letters again. This is extremely annoying. This happened during the beta phase too, twice! Why do you guys keep changing the kernel with regards to drive letters? Forst it was sdx, then hdx, then sdx, now hdx again. Normally, for a 1 harddrive machine, it wouldnet matter. But some of us have multiple harddrives with mount point specified in the /etc/fstab. Some of us also have startup scripts that mount folders and drives to different places. Everytime this changes, it takes me alot of time to fix the problem.

Pick a method, and stick with it!

Mark

[Freddy Martinez (freddymartinez9)]

I can confirm this on my Feisty machine when upgrading from the 2.6.20-15-generic kernel to 2.6.20-16-generic.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Thank you for your bug report.

Mark:
Which kernel were you running previously?
Which kernel are you running now?
Can you include the output of
cat /etc/fstab
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
lspci -nn
in this bug report?

(BTW the /dev/<blockdevice> syntax is deprecated - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2007-June/001061.html )

[Mark (nix4me)]

Sitsofe Wheeler wrote:
> Thank you for your bug report.
>
> Mark:
> Which kernel were you running previously?
> Which kernel are you running now?
> Can you include the output of
> cat /etc/fstab
> cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
> lspci -nn
> in this bug report?
>
> (BTW the /dev/<blockdevice> syntax is deprecated -
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-
> discuss/2007-June/001061.html )
>
>
Old kernel: 2.6.20-15-generic
new kernel: 2.6.20-16-generic

Here is a txt file of the rest:

nix4me@nix4me-server:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=7fdd436c-1f98-4147-a87f-c667e70186af / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=635c36a8-d0fe-40f3-aa28-80f5b7c8034f none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/sdb1 xfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd1 /mnt/sdc1 xfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sdd1 xfs defaults 0 0

nix4me@nix4me-server:~$ cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
# grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
# grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
# and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
# WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not change this entry to 'saved' or your
# array will desync and will not let you boot your system.
default 0

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 3

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
hiddenmenu

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue

## password ['--md5'] passwd
# If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing
# control (menu entry editor and command-line) and entries protected by the
# command 'lock'
# e.g. password topsecret
# password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/
# password topsecret

#
# examples
#
# title Windows 95/98/NT/2000
# root (hd0,0)
# makeactive
# chainloader +1
#
# title Linux
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro
#

#
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below

## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. ...

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Mark:
You have an 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller which along with the kernels involved guarantees you are seeing fallout from Bug #116996 . I strongly recommend switching your fstab to UUIDs for your hard disk partitions. Optical drives are a little trickier and are covered by Bug #117413 ...

[Mark (nix4me)]

Well, they changed back yet again this morning with the kernel 2.6.20-16.29 update.

Any chance of this being the final fix and leaving the drive mounting alone?

I will look into using UUID, but that seems like a bandaid type fix to me. If UUID is going to be the fix-all, then then Ubuntu should setup the drives like that itself upon installation. Perhaps that is part of the problem here. When installing a harddrice other than the install drive, there is currently no help given. A person has to drop to the command line and setup the fstab themselves.

Thanks,
Mark

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

yep. we are back to PATA as sdX
just like the 2.6.22 kernel and 2.6.20.15

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The installer should have used UUIDs instead of drive letters like /dev/hda or /dev/sda. How exactly did you go about installing Ubuntu?

[Mark (nix4me)]

Brian Murray wrote:
> The installer should have used UUIDs instead of drive letters like
> /dev/hda or /dev/sda. How exactly did you go about installing Ubuntu?
>
> ** Changed in: linux-meta (Ubuntu)
> Status: Confirmed => Incomplete
>
>
It wasn't the install drive. It was 2nd and 3rd drive. UUID is a
mystery when setting up additional drives. Since there are no official
tools or documentation. Its been stable now, all drives have stayed sdx.

But, the there should be a tool to partition and assign UUID's to the
fstab file when new drives are added. Linux is still lacking in this
respect.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I'm not quite sure what you are looking for as "official tools or documentation" but you might find https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingUUID helpful and the command 'vol_id' which is part of the volumeid package.

[Mark (nix4me)]

Brian Murray wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what you are looking for as "official tools or
> documentation" but you might find
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingUUID helpful and the command
> 'vol_id' which is part of the volumeid package.
>
>
Here are my thoughts.

I find it unfortunate that when a person decides to buy a new hard
drive, installs it into the computer and turns the machine on, nothing
happens.

The drive is there, but there is no prompt to do anything.

Then the person thinks, hmm, maybe i need to start a program to do
something to the drive.

Alas, there is no "default" utility in the system menus to install
filesystem/mount it. And, there is certainly no utility to mount it
permanately in the fstab file.

So the person has o go read docs on what to do. He finds a bunch of old
stuff about hdb but that doesnt work because the kernel has changed all
drives to sdx. And he certainly doesnt find anything about how UUID works.

Just seems to me that there should be a standard gnome utility to take
care of all of this. A person shouldn't have to google for hours to
figure out the installation of a hard drive. And when the developers
change hd to sd, they caused a huge issue with people who had drives
defined "without UUID" in the fstab. To switch 1 time is almost
acceptable, but they switched to sd, then switched back, then switched
back to sd.

my 2 cents.

Mark Ryan

[Mark (nix4me)]

Rolf Leggewie wrote:
> ** Changed in: linux-meta (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => New
>
>
Yes, this bug still exists on 8.04. I had to switch to using UUID
because the drive letters kept changing again at reboots.

[opieum (opieum)]

This issue is still a problem in Intrepid as well. UUIDs can be useful in some cases but this is a major problem when using mdadm which seems to handle them based on the mount points rather than UUID.

In my case this is a problem almost every time I boot. (sometimes I get lucky)

[MountainX (dave-mountain)]

I think I might be experiencing problems from this issue

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6802296&postcount=14

the Ubuntu installer think my drive is hd0, the live CD shows it as hd4 (sde) and grub sees it as hd1.

Is this the same issue described here? Thanks

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

This is not a bug in the linux-meta package, moving to the linux package.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!