Manual partitioning: Label field

[Chris Murphy]

On May 5, 2013, at 6:19 PM, Clyde E. Kunkel <clydekunkel7734 at verizon.net> wrote:

> On 05/05/2013 12:43 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> For LVM, the Name field is used for the Logical Volume name. Label field is available, but appears it's not used for anything.
>> 
>> For Btrfs, the Name field is used for the subvolume name. Again, the label field is available, but the entry is unused.
>> 
>> For Standard Partitions, the Name field is grayed out with the device designation entered in for you and you can't change it. And the Label field is where you give the volume a name. This is pretty screwy. I think the Label field can be dropped, but before filing a bug I figured I'd see if I'm missing something.
>> 
>> 
>> Chris Murphy
>> 
> 
> I use label fields extensively in testing multiple distros on single hardware suites with multiple btrfs and ext4 paritions.  I find them very useful.
> 
> What is your objection to them?

I don't object to them. It's confusing figuring out what the three fields: Name, Label, Name, are going to be used for.

Standard Partitions:
- Name field is grayed out and unused.
- Label field is applied to the volume label, i.e. the label for the file system (e.g. mkfs.ext4 -L <volume-label>)

LVM:
- Name field is used to name the LVM Logical Volume.
- Label field is used for the volume label (the file system label)
- Configure Volume Group, Name field is used to name the LVM Volume Group.

Btrfs:
- Name field is used to name the subvolume.
- Label field is not used, apparently.
- Configure Volume, Name field, is used to name the volume-label.


But before complaining about how confusing this is, I think it might be more useful to also state an alternative that I think would be less confusing. And I'm not immediately thinking of any. The simplest option at the moment would be for the Btrfs Label field to be grayed out.

But I think the name of the field needs to change depending on the technology used.

For LVM, the field should be Logical Volume Name. Not just Name. And the Label field should be Volume Label, and probably be located under File System and indented. And then when it's Btrfs that Volume Label field is replaced with the Volume pop-up menu.


Chris Murphy