From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 3 17:54:18 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E156106566B for ; Wed, 3 Feb 2010 17:54:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx01.qsc.de (mx01.qsc.de [213.148.129.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C3E8D8FC08 for ; Wed, 3 Feb 2010 17:54:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r55.edvax.de (port-92-195-104-232.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.104.232]) by mx01.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 128473DD39; Wed, 3 Feb 2010 18:54:16 +0100 (CET) Received: from r55.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r55.edvax.de (8.14.2/8.14.2) with SMTP id o13HsFIN002272; Wed, 3 Feb 2010 18:54:16 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 18:54:15 +0100 From: Polytropon To: Steve Franks Message-Id: <20100203185415.74e05d77.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <539c60b91002030935m31f66c6ft247f1231ad61656@mail.gmail.com> References: <539c60b91002030935m31f66c6ft247f1231ad61656@mail.gmail.com> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.7 (GTK+ 2.12.1; i386-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: adding disk moves ad0 to ad4 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:54:18 -0000 On Wed, 3 Feb 2010 10:35:48 -0700, Steve Franks wrote: > Just curious, having read the handbook section talking about freebsd > going straight to the hardware and skipping the bios for disk > numbering, why then, if I stick a sata disk in 'sata0' on the > motherboard, does it come up as ad0, but if I add a second disk in > 'sata1' or 'pata0', on the next boot, I have no ad0, but ad4 and ad6? > This seems to be the case with every mobo I've owned in the last 2 > years from a variety of mfr's. Is there a way around this? Maybe this is specific to your motherboard. As far as I experienced, using (P)ATA and SATA - or not using it - keeps the numbering intact, e. g. ad0 - ad3 is ATA, ad4 - ad7 is SATA, no matter where a disk is actually connected. It's possible that your BIOS does something strange in representing one SATA, but no ATA disk as ad0, "the first disk existing", as well as if an ATA disk would be present, but no SATA disk. I can understand that this is annoying. > I don't > care what it comes out as, as long as it stays put... There are labels or UFSIDs you can use to identify partitions on a disk regardless of the device name they would come out as. See "man glabel" and "man tunefs" for details. > Since I have > the only fbsd system at work, I tend to format alot of funky drives > for people, and it gets anoying having to swap fstab's every time... Labels can really help here: /etc/fstab will then contain labels or UFSIDs instead of device names - and they don't change when a disk is added or removed. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...