[Conky-users] diskiograph and persistent naming

[Kevin <stagm002@d.umn.edu>]

Hello,
I've come across an issue where I'm unable to find the answer in
regards to how I can specify a persistent name for a hard drive for
use with the diskiograph, diskio_read and diskio_write objects. One of
my drives will either be sda or sdd upon boot. I've tried specifying a
udev rule to force the name but it's suggested by the logs I use a
symlink. When I specify a symlink value I don't get any conky
readings. For example I call the symlink "mediadisk%n" so that the
device will show as "/dev/mediadisk1". I specify "${diskiograph
mediadisk1}" and dd a 1GB write and I see nothing graphed, and the
similar lines for write and read don't show anything either. I thought
it was first to do with perhaps my choice of naming, so I changed the
symlink value to "hda". hda shouldn't be used on my system, so that
seemed safe. I still was not seeing the output I expected. I've also
tried specifying the full path to the device with "/dev/mediadisk1"
without any luck. My two "mdX" devices work fine when I specify them
as "${diskiograph md1}" and ${diskiograph md2}", so I don't think the
syntax I'm using is incorrect.

What I'm starting to think is that conky doesn't follow the symlinks
or doesn't like them for some reason. I have only found two other
resources describing the problem I'm having:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1658087
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=76493

I would like to know if there's some work-around I have not thought of
or if there's a way I can specify my hard drive by UUID.

My system information is:
Linux telemachus 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Mar 7 21:35:22 UTC 2011
x86_64 GNU/Linux
conky version 1.8.1-4

The relevant bits from my config are:
${color black}${diskiograph md1 18,100 36ff00 14a6f1} ${color
black}${diskiograph md2 18,100 14a6f1 36ff00 -t} ${color
black}${diskiograph sda1 18,100 14a6f1 36ff00 -t}
${color white}Reads: ${diskio_read md1} ${goto 110} Reads:
${diskio_read md2} ${goto 212} Reads: ${diskio_read sda1}
${color white}Writes: ${diskio_write md1} ${goto 110} Writes:
${diskio_write md2} ${goto 212} Writes: ${diskio_write sda1}

In this case "sda1" is what my drive showed up as according to the kernel name.

-Kevin