[H-GEN] I don't understand this.

R&J Stuart rjstuart at bigpond.net.au
Thu May 15 09:20:09 EDT 2003


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Ewan Edwards wrote:
> I'm still really curious to know why the RH9 system mount /dev/hde1 instead of 
> /dev/hda1 on the root directory.

RH 9 (I think it started with 8.0?) looks at the filesystem labels when 
trying to find the rootfs.  /etc/fstab is not consulted when deciding to 
mount the root fs - it isn't mounted! So, this must be passed as a parameter 
to the kernel at boot time or otherwise magically determined.

My RH 8.0 box has this for the root fs:
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1

The redhat section of the grub.conf for my RH 8.0 box looks like this:
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14)
         root (hd0,1)
         kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
         initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img

So I'm guessing that somehow, the searching through partitions and 
filesystems on the machine finds your hde before your hda, or after 
depending on whether the decision gets made on first found or last.

Regards,

Robert


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