'apropos uuid' doesn't find blkid [rant]

[Tom H]

On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Amedee Van Gasse
<amedee-ubuntu at amedee.be> wrote:
> Op 31-07-10 18:48, Nils Kassube schreef:
>> Amedee Van Gasse wrote:
>>> amedee at fangorn:~$ blkid
>>
>> You'd better repeat that command with sudo because otherwise you may get
>> obsolete UUIDs due to the cache blkid uses.
>
> Yeah well I happen to have read permission on the raw block device so it
> doesn't matter if I use sudo or not. See 'man libblkid' for details.
>
> Anyway the new partition format was NTFS and the old one FAT. They use
> different UUID formats (FAT: xxxx-xxxx vs NTFS: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, where
> x is a hex digit) and I got an NTFS-type UUID so I knew I got the right
> one. After changing /etc/fstab, I tried to mount the partition and that
> succeeded so that's another confirmation that I got the right UUID.
>
> But thanks anyway, for the event that somebody ever runs into a blkid
> inconsistency.

You can skip the cache by adding "-c /dev/null" to the blkid command
but it may not work as a non-root user.

"man -K uuid" finds blkid because it does a full search of the man pages.