[Curiosity]

In Linux versions Knoppix, Mandriva, Kubuntu, and Mepis, I have noticed some strange device naming conventions and was wondering how they come about. For an IDE hard drive, I see that the primary partition is named hda1, and the extended partition is hda2. Since I have more partitions than that, the next drive (D: ) is called hda5, drive E is hda6, drive F is hda7. What happened to hda3 and hda4?
There is something strange about the naming of the USB flash drive as well. I can have the flash drive in the same slot consistently, but with Knoppix, I have to boot the configuration from sda1. When the device appears on my desktop after booting, it is called sdc1. What is going on here? With Mepis and Kubuntu, that same device is being called sde1. Why the difference in naming? Why is it not called sdb or sdd?

Edit: I changed your reference to D: drive because the board turned it into "D"
Glenn

[ghporter]

"HDA" stands for "hard drive A." The second physical drive on the same controller would be called "hdb" for "hard drive B." "SDA" stands for "SCSI drive A" which indicates that these distros handle USB drives like SCSI drives. The changes in naming for the USB drives come from the Linux kernel reassigning drive names after it finishes booting, and is related to how the boot code enumerates USB controllers and channels.

Nothing is going wonky, it's just what can be refered to as "normal variation."

[Dork.]

As far as where hda3 and hda4 went, I seem to remember the fact that there can only be four primary partitions. You indicated that yourself when you said that hda2 was your "extended" partition. Extended partitions are primary partitions which are containers for "sub-partitions" (not sure what the proper term is) that divide up the extended partition.

So, hda1 through hda4 are reserved for these primary partitions. If one of your primary partitions is an extended partition, all the "sub-partitions" within it are numbered starting with hda5, regardless of whether the four primary partitions are allocated or not.

Got it?

[Curiosity]

Originally Posted by Dork.

So, hda1 through hda4 are reserved for these primary partitions. If one of your primary partitions is an extended partition, all the "sub-partitions" within it are numbered starting with hda5, regardless of whether the four primary partitions are allocated or not.

Got it?

Got it. That makes sense.

[Curiosity]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The changes in naming for the USB drives come from the Linux kernel reassigning drive names after it finishes booting, and is related to how the boot code enumerates USB controllers and channels.

So, when I tell Knoppix to boot something off this drive, it expects to look at the first possible device of that type (sda1), but after getting configured, it realizes that this is not the first thing in line? Mepis and Kubuntu must be counting starting at a different USB port?

[ghporter]

That's the basic idea, yes. I don't know if there's a particular setting in the startup configuration files to control this, but there might be.