Since Kernel 2.6, udev provides a userspace solution for the dynamic /dev directory, with persistent device naming. As part of the hotplug system, udev is executed if a device is added to or removed from the system.

A list of rules is used to match against specific device attributes. The udev rules infrastructure (defined in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory) provides stable names for all disk devices, regardless of their order of recognition or the connection used for the device. The udev tools examine every appropriate block device that the kernel creates to apply naming rules based on certain buses, drive types, or file systems. For information about how to define your own rules for udev, see Writing udev Rules (http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html).

Along with the dynamic kernel-provided device node name, udev maintains classes of persistent symbolic links pointing to the device in the /dev/disk directory, which is further categorized by the by-id, by-label, by-path, and by-uuid subdirectories.

Note: UUID Generators

Other programs besides udev, such as LVM or md, might also generate UUIDs, but they are not listed in /dev/disk.

A UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) is a 128-bit number for a file system that is unique on both the local system and across other systems. It is randomly generated with system hardware information and time stamps as part of its seed. UUIDs are commonly used to uniquely tag devices.

Using non-persistent “traditional” device names such as /dev/sda1 may render the system unbootable when adding storage. For example, if root (/) is assigned to /dev/sda1, it might be reassigned to /dev/sdg1 after a SAN has been attached or additional hard disks have been applied to the system. In this case the boot loader configuration and the /etc/fstab file need to be adjusted, otherwise the system will no longer boot.

One way to avoid this problem is to use the UUID in the boot loader and /etc/fstab files for the boot device. This is the default in SUSE Linux Enterprise since version 12. The UUID is a property of the file system and can change if you reformat the drive. Other alternatives to using UUIDs of device names would be to identify devices by ID or label.

You can also use the UUID as criterion for assembling and activating software RAID devices. When a RAID is created, the md driver generates a UUID for the device, and stores the value in the md superblock.

You can find the UUID for any block device in the /dev/disk/by-uuid directory. For example, a UUID entry looks like this:

tux > ls -og /dev/disk/by-uuid/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10 Dec  5 07:48 e014e482-1c2d-4d09-84ec-61b3aefde77a -> ../../sda1

For more information about using udev for managing devices, see Chapter 16, Dynamic Kernel Device Management with udev, Administration Guide.

For more information about udev commands, see man 7 udev.