Opened 7 years ago
Last modified 7 years ago
#16622 new enhancement
Adding an SSD on 2-HD system can confuse drive assignments
| Reported by: | Pierre Fortin | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Component: | virtual disk | Version: | VirtualBox 5.1.18 |
| Keywords: | Cc: | ||
| Guest type: | Linux | Host type: | Linux |
Description
Starting with a 2 HD Dell M6800, VB sees the drives as HD1 = sda & HD2 = sdb.
Adding a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD drive caused Linux to assign drives as:
HD1 = sda, SSD = sdb & HD2 = sdc
My local Mageia Linux install repository resides on HD2p7. This physical source disk was originally defined in DIST[-pt].vmdk as sdb. After the SSD was installed, VB could not see the installation files because HD2(sdb) was now at sdc.
Simply editing DIST.vmdk to change the only occurrence of sdb to sdc resolved the problem.
Could this have been overcome by using UUID instead of sdX?
Attachments (2)
Change History (6)
comment:1 by , 7 years ago
comment:2 by , 7 years ago
VBox was created and assigned HD2 as a raw storage device because it contains my local repository mirrors. Adding an SSD many months later re-ordered the storage to Linux host. At the next reboot opportunity, I plan to investigate if the order is BIOS defined... In the meanwhile, I posted an FYI at https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20597 which points back here. My Linux host uses UUIDs for the many storage devices in use; hoping to see VBox support UUIDs for storage soon. Thanks! VBox.log: I'll attach 2 logs; one where the problem occurred, and one after changing the .vmdk from sdb to sdc.
by , 7 years ago
| Attachment: | VBox.log.afterSSD added |
|---|
After SSD instalation which changed disk order.
comment:3 by , 7 years ago
You might be successful creating a raw disk VMDK by using one of the block devices in /dev/disk/by-<type>/, where <type> is one of id, label or uuid. This will only work when assigning complete disks, not single partitions as the code for creating the raw VMDK descriptors can't deal with it (yet, contributions welcome :) ).
comment:4 by , 7 years ago
Thanks for that tip. However...
by-uuid,by-label: these only apply to partitions.
by-id: applies to raw disk & partitions. This works!
I wish my coding skills allowed me to contribute. :) Section 9.9.1.2 of the UserManual should be updated from /dev/sda to /dev/{sda,disk/by-id/<id>}.
Reading between the lines (where is your VBox.log file?) it seems that you are talking about assigning raw storage devices to your VM, is that correct?