Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Date: 2002-10-12 08:00:38 PST

> > I've modified /etc/fstab, renamed /data to /misc (after umounting
> > /data), and rebooted.
>
> Did you also run "e2label" to update the partition's label from "/data" to
> "/misc"?

BTW, the use of labels to identify partitions was not popular until RH 7.x time. I personally feel it to be a danger. It has the disadvantage that there might be other partitions on the system which have same labels, but the system may be ignoring those labels, until you use one in an fstab. In my case, I have several Linux installations on the same disk, and some shared partitions, so managing labels is no easier than keeping track of device names.

First, a little more precise terminology: a partition is a device with a name, /dev/hdb1; a filesystem has a name in reference to its location in a / directory struction, /data. True, it can be labeled, but isn't done so automatically (except, perhaps by the RH et al. installer).

So you could have accomplished the above by: /dev/hdb1 /data ext3 defaults 0 3 and not encountered the problem.

(The only advantage I can see to using labels is that device names can be rearranged if you delete a partition, requiring you to go change /etc/fstab. But that's a situation rarely encountered.)

Dave Brown