On Thursday 16 April 2009 11:28:54 Thomas Chef wrote: > From the handbook: > To begin, we'll introduce block devices. The most famous block device is > probably the one that represents the first drive in a Linux system, namely > /dev/sda. SCSI and Serial ATA drives are both labeled /dev/sd*; even IDE > drives are labeled /dev/sd* with the new libata framework in the kernel. If > you're using the old device framework, then your first IDE drive is > /dev/hda . > > But when I boot on Via Epia with my minimal installation CD 2008 I get my > IDE-disk as /dev/hda > > Is the kernel on the minimal CD old ?
Not really. It's whatever was reasonably current at the time the CD image was built. It's not the age of the kernel that matters here. it's which drivers are in use. These things are in a constant state of flux and right now the Linux kernel still has drivers for the old and the new way of doing things with disks. Rationale: a driver writer decided some time ago that it would be better to consolidate things in the kernel and use the same code-base for all types of disk. This makes things easier overall as you don't have to eternally figure out if you have IDE/SCSI/PATA/SCSI/something_else drives - the thing is always going to be /dev/sd** But you can still use the old drivers and framework if you choose. Apparently, whoever mastered that CD did choose. Point being, if /dev/sda doesn't work for you and /dev/hda does, then you should be using /dev/hda. From your point of view, it's just a name for something -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
