What is the "/dev/xvda1" device?
Solution 1
You are on a Xen VPS(or virtual machine); xvd*
are simply the Xen disk storage devices (Xen Virtual block Device). They appear instead of sda, etc. when you are using the more efficient paravirtualized Xen disk drivers instead of straight-up SCSI disk emulation. If you list the installed modules (drivers) on a Xen HVM, this driver will show as blkfront
(or xen_blk
if you are running on a very old Xen version--pretty rare).
In short, treat xvda1
exactly as you would sda1
on a regular PC.
Solution 2
It's probably /dev/xvda1
rather than /dev/xvdal
.
Virtual storage devices, representing cloud storage (or paravirtualized storage generally, as izx has pointed out), are typically exposed in Ubuntu through /dev/xvd
nodes. /dev/xvda1
is the first partition of the first such device (just as /dev/sda1
is the first partition of the first SCSI or SCSI-like storage device).
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Gaurav Agarwal
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Gaurav Agarwal almost 2 years
When I type
mount
on theroot
of my Ubuntu system I get the output/dev/xvdal on / type ext4 (rw,noatime)
I want to know what is the meaning of
/dev/xvdal
in this? -
Gaurav Agarwal almost 12 years@izx You know a hell lot about these machines.
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ish almost 12 years@darkcrow lol, sadly I have had to know way more than I should about Xen and OpenVZ VPSs.... ;)