Option to use /dev values instead of UUID values

[Rei Shinozuka]

Here's a UUID question.  I cloned a partition in the manner described 
below (partimage) and rebooted, into what I thought would be /dev/sda6.

The  UUIDs for my primary disk look like:

$ blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="8A7C8AB17C8A9799" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="8b7ff663-0ddc-483e-9fbd-c2f0bfae009d" TYPE="ext3" 
SEC_TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda6: UUID="8b7ff663-0ddc-483e-9fbd-c2f0bfae009d" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda7: UUID="9c617881-cd5f-4b93-8d6c-8140c7282300" SEC_TYPE="ext2" 
TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda8: TYPE="swap" UUID="5e150b2a-99b2-4c60-b645-2a28f295f0e1"
/dev/sda9: UUID="48b4d1f9-d6cd-481c-97d9-13d2c7b5a5f4" TYPE="ext3" 
SEC_TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda10: UUID="1c5653e3-e8e0-4938-8bc8-a3ecc11c5765" SEC_TYPE="ext2" 
TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda11: UUID="574e3ae5-534c-48e2-b600-27f28b04e2bf" SEC_TYPE="ext2" 
TYPE="ext3"

NOTE: /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6 have the SAME UUID?  Did partimage somehow 
duplicate the UUID?

Previous to my tinkering, UUID looked like the following, and /dev/sda5 
and /dev/sda6 had distinct UUIDs.

$ blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="8A7C8AB17C8A9799" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="3f3494a7-d3a2-40ea-94e7-23851023abf4" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda6: UUID="8b7ff663-0ddc-483e-9fbd-c2f0bfae009d" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda7: UUID="9c617881-cd5f-4b93-8d6c-8140c7282300" SEC_TYPE="ext2" 
TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda8: TYPE="swap" UUID="5e150b2a-99b2-4c60-b645-2a28f295f0e1"
/dev/sda9: UUID="48b4d1f9-d6cd-481c-97d9-13d2c7b5a5f4" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda10: UUID="1c5653e3-e8e0-4938-8bc8-a3ecc11c5765" SEC_TYPE="ext2" 
TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda11: UUID="574e3ae5-534c-48e2-b600-27f28b04e2bf" SEC_TYPE="ext2" 
TYPE="ext3"

you never stop learning.
thanks in advance!

-rei

On 03/24/2010 12:12 PM, Rei Shinozuka wrote:
> Here's a slightly tangential but related question about uuids
>
> If I want to create a copy of my boot partition (/dev/sda6), my old way
> was to restore a partimage backup to an adjacent partition (/dev/sda5)
> and replace in /etc/fstab /dev/sda6 with /dev/sda5.  can i just do the
> same by looking up uuids with blkid and replacing the corresponding sda6
> uuid with the sda5 uuid from blkid?
>
> thanks,
>
> -rei
>
>
>
> On 03/24/2010 11:12 AM, Rashkae wrote:
>    
>> And still there's the big elephant in the room that gets overlooked by
>> many Linux users who lovingly cherish and maintain old computers.  Back
>> in the day, over 90% (number pulled from arse) computers had exactly 1
>> hard drive controller, which could hand a maximum of 4 hard drives, and
>> the method to reference those hard drives was fixed (primary and
>> secondary master/slave).  Pretty simple to keep /dev notation in line.
>> But now that's completely different. Most Mobos have at least 2 hard
>> drive IO controllers, 3 or 4 buses, and the bios reference to each drive
>> is completely fluid, and can often get changed with no notice.  Going
>> back to /dev is just not an option, and making it one on install is just
>> inviting a regression in terms of support and ease of use.
>>
>>
>>
>>      
>
>