John, The device names under /dev/ do not matter under Linux/Unix. Unlike Windows A:/B:/... equivalent. Linux/Unix have separate filesystem you mount physical disks and their partitions to. Everything is accessing the physical disks/partition data through that root (/) filesystem.
The point is, you see the partitions mounted to the right filesystem directories because you identify them by LABEL, independently of the actual HW connection and /dev/sda. So, it works as intended. As I said before - you, mount or systemd - cannot ordinarily change the drive letter assignment. That is how it should be. If it is really bothering you - you will have to physically swap the drives in your PC. It is pointless though, because you cannot access the partition content through /dev/sda1 anyway. Unless you use low level tools like dd. Your expressed intention is to copy your partitions to your new NVMe drive. Guess what - the device name will look like /dev/nvme0n1p1, and there is nothing you can do about it. So, I recommend to get used to variable physical device names. That is why we have LABELs or uuids. Hope this helps, Tomas On Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 13:52 John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 27 Nov 2019 21:35:21 -0500 > Tomas Kuchta <[email protected]> dijo: > > >What is your problem with the mount points? Do you see the right data > >in the right directories? > > Everything mounts and appears just fine in the various GUI file managers > that I have installed. My only problem is the /dev... assignments are > suddenly different. And there is the 'Error: no symbol table' message > on boot that is worrisome. > > I am trying to understand systemd. I read these pages without > understanding much of what they were talking about: > > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd#Writing_unit_files > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Partitioning#GUID_Partition_Table > > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#GUID_Partition_Table_(GPT)_specific_instructions > > My problem is that I don't understand much of the basics to begin with, > and the above articles assume that the reader does. For years my boot > and home partitions were on /dev/sdb, the data drive was /dev/sda, and > Movies was /dev/sdc. These assignments never changed. Now, suddenly the > boot and home drive is /dev/sdc, data is /dev/sda, and movies > is .dev/sdb. I seem to have no control over this. What would happen if I > rebooted with a USB drive (data, not bootable) in one of the ports? > Suddenly all the drive letter assignments might change. In the past I > could count on such a new USB stick being assigned the next > letter, /dev/sdd, but now I don't know what might happen. From what I > have gleaned the boot order is controlled by systemd. Maybe systemd > was only added in 18.04. > > Also, while poking around trying to figure this out I discovered that I > have 26 different kernels listed in the grub.cfg menu, with matching > aba-, config- and initrd- files. Whenever the update manager installs a > new kernel for me, apparently it does not remove old ones. I really > don't need 26 boot options in my grub menu. I hope there is some simple > and reliable way to fix this, rather than manually editing grub.cfg and > deleting the unneeded files. > > Many people on Ubuntu forums and elsewhere recommend reinstalling grub. > Indeed, that may solve a lot of my issues, but it's scary for someone > who doesn't understand much about how grub works. > > I'm going to continue to poke around and read about all this. The > computer is running fine as it is, so maybe I'll just wait until the > Clinic to try to fix the grub boot problem. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
