Adding a drive

[Alan Dacey Sr.]

On Tuesday 06 April 2010 05:28:28 pm Steve Morris wrote:
> On 06/04/10 08:23, Alan Dacey Sr. wrote:
> > On Monday 05 April 2010 10:07:49 am Basil Chupin wrote:
> >> On 05/04/10 23:53, Tom H wrote:
> >>> On 05/04/10, Steve Morris wrote:
> >>>>> Just a comment on this process. I is my experience that the only safe
> >>>>> method of mounting a partition is to ensure that at format time a
> >>>>> label is specified for the partition and use the label in the fstab
> >>>>> entry, uuid is terribly unreliable.
> >>>>> Uuid is unreliable as a partition identifier because moving a
> >>>>> partition changes the uuid, deleting and recreating a partition in
> >>>>> the same physical place changes the uuid and an inplace resize of a
> >>>>> partition changes the uuid.
> >>> 
> >>> On 05/04/2010, Basil Chupin wrote:
> >>>> Ah, a most interesting point. I have taken a note of this, thanks very
> >>>> much.
> >>> 
> >>> Not using a UUID goes against Ubuntu standard practice (and upcoming
> >>> Debian standard practice).
> >>> 
> >>> It should be standard operating procedure for anyone about to embark
> >>> on any of the above partition changes to make a note of the UUIDs (if
> >>> she/he does not have this information saved offline) in order to
> >>> reassign them (a very simple procedure).
> >> 
> >> And thanks for this.
> >> 
> >> I understand that the use of UUIDS is a more stable way of identifying
> >> HDs for grub as the BIOS may on occasions "see" them in a different
> >> order on bootups.
> >> 
> >> BC
> > 
> > UUID's are the way to /always/ identify a particular partition.  Since
> > they should not change vey often, it really isn't much of a problem. 
> > The only time you may want to identify them by /dev/sc# is if you have a
> > partition that you test new distros/releases on (that you want quick
> > access to the data) and gets reformatted frequently.
> > It also teaches you to make the right size partitions.  Especially if you
> > are lazy!
> 
> I wasn't suggesting the use of /dev/sc# in fstab, I was suggesting the
> use of LABEL= to identify the partition, which as far as I have been
> able to determine is only changeable by a format. The obvious issue with
> UUID= is the home partition where multi-user usage of applications like
> mail requires the home partition to be resized because the original size
> has become too small. This resizing will change the uuid, and depending
> on the distribution it is done from and the tool used can result in a
> uuid that is invalid, thereby making the partition unusable.
> 
> regards,
> Steve

You do have a point there and I agree with it.  UUID's will change when the 
partition is changed.  At least editing fstab isn't very difficult.  I got a lot 
of practice with that until I learned to size my partitions to what works for 
me.


-- 
Alan

"Now no one has to tell an old Aberdeene pub-crawler how to applaud, captain."  
Montgomery Scott