Filesystem Label Ambiguity

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 18:22:46 -0700, Jason C. Wells wrote:
> New question related to this topic.  I re-labeled my partitions and my 
> filesystems to use unique labels (volumeN). When I mounted what I 
> thought was a new empty partition, I found old files there.  Ack!

Don't think. Know. ;-)



> Even though I had provided new unique labels, my mount was mounting an 
> unknown partition and disk. This behavior persists across a reboot. Some 
> configuration somewhere is hanging on to old labels, or some other 
> behavior that I misunderstand. I'm in a situation now where I cannot 
> identify or trust that any partition is the intended partition to mount.
> 
> How do I go backward from a label to a special device file? ( a slightly 
> different question than before )

The approach depends on your physical setting. It it possible to
examine each disk individually, partition per partition? If yes,
mount each one r/o (and those you cannot mount are probably swap
partitions). Use the device names first, and probably make a list
to avoid further confusion, containing disk identifier (enumerate
the disks or put color stickers on them), partition number, label,
fule system type (if relevant), content.



> I'll answer my own question, glabel status and the man page for glabel 
> seem to offer some help. Any other pointers are welcome.

Yes, you can use those tools, as well as the gpart command for
identifying what's on the disks. Check the name "provider" within
the documentation.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...