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warning: /etc/fstab doesn't do what you think
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warning: /etc/fstab doesn't do what you think



I've seen a bunch of messages here lately that describe using /etc/fstab to mount volumes at boot.

You don't want to use /etc/fstab on darwin.

Drives are detected and mounted asychronously, which means that the same physical disk might be assigned a different /dev/diskN node depending on how quickly other devices respond to bus probing.

Put simply, /dev/disk2s5 for example, might not be the same partition two boots in a row. It usually will be, but isn't required to be.


If you want to put your VM files on a dedicated partition, reorder the startup items dependencies so that VM is started after volumes are mounted. Have VM specify the swapfiles by the full path /Volumes/somedisk/somewhere.

Or use the fstab, and hope that the drives always respond to bus probes in the same order.

-pmb


References: 
 >RE: Problem with swap partition (From: "Jorge L Lopez" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Problem with swap partition (From: Jayce Piel <email@hidden>)



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