Yes, legacy names are supported. It is 100% backward compatible.
As far as I know ( I'm the author of the patch )
>
> however, this brings up an interesting question: what happens if two disks
> (presumably from two different machines) have the same disk label?
The first one found will be used. You are dependent on the ordering,
only in this special case, while before you were depending on ordering
every time.
> what
> happens then? for instance, i have several linux machines both at my
> workplace and my home. if for some reason one of these machines dies due
> to hardware failure and i want to get stuff off the drives, i put the disk
> containing the /home partition on the failed machine into a working
> machine and reboot. What /home gets mounted then? the original /home or
> the new one from the dead machine? (and don't say end users wouldn't
> possibly do that... if they are adding hardware into their systems this is
> by no means beyond their capabilities)
> at least with physical device nodes i can say 'computer, you will mount
> this partition on this mountpoint!' and be done with it.
You can still do this, nothing is preventing you from it.
If you have /home in your fstab by its label, then you must
change this before you insert the other disk. Possibilities :
( to change in /etc/fstab)
- use UUID instead of volume-label -> no conflicts ever
- temporarily relabel your /home
- temporarily use a device node
>
> so tell me then, how would one discern between two partitions with the
> same label?
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