UUID question

[Nils Kassube]

Jay Ridgley wrote:
> I have two partitions that have UUIDs assigned that were assigned
> during the upgrade to edgy, /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5, the first is
> mounted as / and the second one as swap. The names have changed due to
> the SCSI controller being assigned /dev/sda since sudo fdisk -l shows
> them as /dev/sdb1 and  /dev/sdb5.

The SCSI controller is definitely not assigned a device name, only the 
disks connected to the controller will get device names. However I can't 
tell you why you don't have /dev/sda* entries.

> I also have  three others  that do not,  /dev/hdd,  /dev/sdc1 and
> /dev/sdc2,  these are mounted as /media/cdrom, /home and /archive
> respectively.
>
> It appears that my scsi cdrom /dev/scd1 is not included in /etc/fstab,
> however, the other cdrom is included as /dev/hdd with a mount point of
> /media/cdrom0.
>
> My question is are the UUIDs required or can I change them back to the
> "old fashioned" names (/dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb5) that I have used for
> years with  Linux and various other UNIX systems? 

Well, you _can_ change the entries to device names and it will work, if 
the device names are _always_ the device names you have now. But as you 
mentioned in your first paragraph, you can't be sure that the disk which 
is now at sdb is always sdb - it has been sda before. At least that's how 
I understand it. Now, if device names change, after you have renamed the 
fstab entries to device names, your system won't work any longer. May I 
ask why you want to use device names in your fstab?

> Can I safely create 
> an entry in /etc/fstab for the SCSI CDROM?

Sure.


Nils