Fixing a USB disk to a specific device name

[Roland Smith]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 04:23:58PM +0400, Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Is it possible to assign a specific device name to a USB disk? As in, say I 
> have 2 USB disks -- currently they appear as da0 and da1. One of these 
> (da0) contains the key for a GELI encrypted partition, and so I mount it 
> from fstab while booting (to get the key).

Yes, more or less.
 
> What I'd like to know is whether there's any way for me to ensure that the 
> da0 disk always appears as da0. I don't want it that tomm I plug in another 
> disk (or change the order of disks, though I'll be more careful with that) 
> and suddenly da0 is no longer at da0! That would hamper the boot process 
> ... not nice.

It is possible, but not as daX. Use the glabel(8) utility to label your
disks. They will show up as /dev/label/<yourlabel>

The daX devices are created as the device is plugged in, so AFAIK it's
impossible to permanently assign them a certain daX device.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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