SLE11 update reports unreliable mount system found

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

Situation

During the update of any existing SLE10 based product to SLE11 the following message is displayed:

Some partitions in the system on /dev/XdYZ are mounted by kernel-device name. This is not reliable for the update since kernel-device names are unfortunately not persistent. It is strongly recommended to start the old system and change the mount-by method to any other method for all partitions.

Resolution

Change the mount mechanism to one of the available methods:

UUID
LABEL
ID

To change the mount mechanism start up the old system first

log in as root
start YaST2 and start the Partitioner module located in the System section
select the mount point and click 'edit'
then open 'fstab-options'
and change here the device to the preferred mount mechanism
repeat above steps for all mount points

This will change the entries in /etc/fstab accordingly. As last step update the 'root=' entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Please note: Users of virtual environments such as XEN or VMware should use either mount by UUID or mount by LABEL as the /dev/disk/by-id/ devices contain hardware information from the physical disk (e.g. serial number) which is not available in virtual environments. To set a label to the filesystem please consult the man pages of e.g. xfs_admin, reiserfstune or tune2fs.

Additional Information

The old mounting system used /dev/hdXY (X = letter of disk connected to an IDE controller, Y = partition number, e.g. hda3 = third primary partition on first IDE disk, hdb5 = first logical partition on second IDE disk) or /dev/sdXY (for SCSI devices) entries in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst. As those names may change by adding new disks it is no longer recommended to use those.
Since SLE10SP1 this method was changed to use the entries in /dev/disk/by-id/ (please see TID 000016313- "New default in SLES/SLED 10 SP1: mount "by Device ID" for more info).

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