UUIDs in fstab

Christopher L Tubbs II ctubbsii at emich.edu
Wed Apr 30 06:39:15 UTC 2008


Andrew Farris wrote:
> Chuck Anderson wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 12:35:41AM -0400, Christopher L Tubbs II wrote:
>>> Granted, I understand that a UUID is just as good as a LABEL, as far 
>>> as functionality goes, but LABELs are so much easier to read, 
>>> compare, and type. Why would the F9 installer choose to create UUIDs 
>>> instead of readable LABELs? I have no idea.
>>
>> UUIDs are unique.  LABELs may not be.
> 
> This is precisely the reason, because the realization has hit people 
> that a system may have many linux distros installed on it, so labels 
> made by other distros for '/' are not unique; at the same time the 
> device names are no longer guaranteed to be in any particular ordering 
> when some devices come and go (hotswapped drives especially).  UUIDs are 
> the identifier that won't get mixed up or changed.
> 

I suppose the rare situation with many linux distros on one computer may 
cause issue, but personally, I'd have preferred the partitioning utility 
in the installer to offer the option to set/view labels instead (perhaps 
next to the option to generate a UUID for the partition?)...

After all, the partitioning tool in the installer needs more features 
anyway: such as being able to set boot flags (useful for dual boot 
systems that don't put grub in MBR). It could also support explicitly 
positioned partitions: currently, it orders you're partitions for you, 
but who says I want boot partition placed before root partition or free 
space? (This issue came up for me recently, when I found I was unable to 
reserve space at the beginning of the drive for a Dell utility 
partition: I don't remember the specifics but I ended up booting Knoppix 
and used gparted before running F9 installer).

Rainman

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