Device rename procedure

Why can we need device renaming? There can be many needs. For example, we are making a migration Project and we dont want changes at device names. OR there can be our standard naming convention to make devices more clear and we want to rename them to manage easier. Reasons can be sampled much more.

For example, my reason was naming convention to manage easier.
I wanted to rename my ASR disks at Oracle RAC Clusters. Therefore, there wont be any mistakes between ASR disks and non-ASR disks, Management will be easier.

Some Operating systems may have special commands for device renaming. For example AIX has a command called RENDEV for renaming devices. But this procedure is valid for all Operating Systems ( Solaris / Linux / AIX ) and we dont need any special command, we will use MKNOD command.

Gather major and minor numbers for your device

- ls -lL /dev/rdsk/c10t50060E8005271760d5s0

crw-r----- 1 root sys 307, 1608 date/time /dev/rdsk/c10t50060E8005271760d5s0

Create another alias device with same majör and minör number

- mknod /dev/crs_ocr1 c 307 1608

Here is your new renamed device

- ls -l /dev/crs_ocr1
crw-r----- 1 root oinstall 307, 1608 date/time /dev/crs_ocr1

Of course this does not replace original device /dev/rdsk/c10t50060E8005271760d5s0
It continues existing. But you can make all your work using /dev/crs_ocr1
It does not dissapear against reboots etc. This is a safe and simple way to use. Enjoy renaming !

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