Interesting recovery frustrations

[Tom H]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:54 AM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> For fstab, Ubuntu refers to filesystems by their UUIDs because the
>> device names on which these filesystems are created aren't always
>> persistent.
>>
>> For grub, Ubuntu refers to filesystems by their UUIDs because the
>> device names on which these filesystems are created aren't always
>> persistent and to devices by their hardware IDs because the device
>> names aren't always persistent.
>
> Nothing is persistent as far as any of this goes - UUIDs change when a
> drive is reformatted or the user changes it. Labels change when a
> drive is reformatted or the user changes it. Device names change when
> they change, although short of repartitioning or physically moving the
> drive connectors, they tend to be slightly more persistent than either
> the UUID or the label.
>
> So what? I like my method. You like yours. Doesn't mean anyone else
> has to use either one.

When reformatting?! Why not also include the possibility of swapping a
disk out and ending up with a different hardware ID?!

I recently had a box where the kernel module load order changed after
an update and the device names changed. So device names aren't more
persistent than UUIDs or labels (at least for that reason). For a
single install, filesystem UUIDs don't change except when you dual-,
triple-, quadruple-, ...-boot and you allow mkswap to run during the
install of the nth OS. The swap partition's UUID is then changed...

You seem to be agreeing with the earlier ranter about using device
names and thereby deviating from Ubuntu standards in a worse way than
enabling root because you can (CAN!) make a system unbootable.