Arch Linux

Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

[SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

I added two entries in fstab for my Windows drive (using ntfs-3g) and for the other distro I have installed on this computer.  Gnome even puts two disk icons on my desktop for me so I can browse them straight from there.  The only problem, and it's not even a problem really, is that the disks are labeled /1 and 48.8 GB Volume.  I'd like to change those to more readable labels but I'm not sure how to do that.  As far as I can tell, there's no option for it in fstab.  Where can I change it?

Last edited by Thrillhouse (2007-07-17 18:09:35)

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dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

u need to unmount the partitions , maybe its best to use a live-cd or arch's one,  and use e2label if theyre ext2/3 or reiserfstune etc.

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Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

The man page for e2label says it's used for ext2 filesystems.  Is it safe to use on ext3?

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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

Yes

Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

OK.  Well, I tried it.  This is what I did:

#umount /dev/sda7  #<----This was successful
#e2label /dev/sda7 Fedora  #<----This looks successful too
#mount -t ext3 /dev/sda7 /media/fedora

and the icon re-appears on the desktop but the label is still /1.  Also, how can I rename the label on the Windows partition?  That's not an ext filesystem so I can't use e2label, correct?

Last edited by Thrillhouse (2007-07-17 16:00:35)

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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

Also, how can I rename the label on the Windows partition?  That's not an ext filesystem so I can't use e2label, correct?

At the risk of sounding tongue-in-cheek, perhaps from within Windows?  I think you just "rename" the drive.

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

I believe you have to reboot or restart udev. The /dev/disk/by-label directories are dynamically created on bootup. See the wiki entry entitled Persistent block device naming..

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Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

Yup.  That did it.  After making some changes in the Windows Disk Management tool, I rebooted and found both the Windows and Linux labels correct.  Thanks.

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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

Re: [SOLVED]Changing the label on a partition

Actually, I just tried to boot into the other Linux partition and got the error:

Could not find filesystem '/dev/root'

Apparently, changing the disk label and making it something different from what's in grub.conf causes that error.  Modifying grub.conf to reflect the new label got past that error but then I got another error during the boot process when fsck tried to check the partition.  Updating the label in fstab got rid of that error and I now have no problems.

Just thought I'd add that in case somebody else encountered the same problem.

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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.