Aha I understand. But what if my cd installation names my disk hda, but when I download the gentoo kernel source and build it it will use sda. So in my lilo.conf I must use hda, and when the new kernel boots it looks for hda (because of my lilo.conf), but in that case it should be sda instead ?
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]>wrote: > 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 > >
