Re: UUIDs on drives

ghe wrote:

Derek Broughton wrote:

| I don't see that the two statements are contradictory. The _hardware_
| identifies itself - but the hardware never identified itself as
/dev/sdb3.
| The software does that...

Yes. That's true. My complaint is that the software sometimes decides
that Derek should get a new phone number. Then Derek's friends can't
find him anymore. And sometimes he's got the kernel in his back pocket.

THAT's why we're using UUID - because software _can_ find that.

| But why would they want to make artificial distinctions between
hardwares?
| The simple fact is that there's nothing intrinsically special about
| being the first SATA disk - especially if you really are wanting to boot
| off
USB.

Beg to differ. If the boot block is on SATA1, grub needs to be able to
find it -- or failing that, go look for it.

Yes, but that boot block may just as easily be on a removable USB stick.
Again, there's nothing intrinsically special about being the first SATA
disk.

| For that matter so would hd, but what would it mean? The whole point is
| that those device names are _meaningless_, and so _shouldn't_ be tagged
| with artificial and misleading distinctions.

They aren't meaningless when they're written into config files like
menu.lst or fstab.

Where they shouldn't be written! That's exactly why Ubuntu went to pains to
make sure both fstab _and_ menu.lst were using UUID before the change to
device names occurred. Now you're complaining that UUID is a bad idea,
because UUID doesn't work if you don't use UUID!

The UUIDs are consistent because they're created when
the fs is built (and because udev never gets ahold of them :-).

But if the installers and updaters are writing sda or (hd0) in the
configs,

They're not.

There may have been good and sufficient reasons for udev (and the
changes to the kernel's block drivers), but the way it was implemented
broke a system that had been working, literally, for decades.

No, it didn't. Refusing to use the new methods is what breaks the system.

| And you couldn't fix that from a live CD? I've managed to make systems
| unbootable before, but you go to a live CD (the first time, I didn't
| even use an Ubuntu one - I don't think they had a live CD then), and
| run "grub-install".

No, I couldn't. Because I've never learned how. I thought about that
route,

Well, then, I just taught you. It's that simple.
--
derek


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