Interesting recovery frustrations

[MR ZenWiz]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:18 AM, Goh Lip <g.lip at gmx.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:54:04 +0800, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Device names change whenever the BIOS boots, that's *everytime* you start
> your computer. If you have more than one hard drive and many thumb drives,
> you can easily see that. Just remove one or more thumb drives and restart,
> you'll see the device names change. Sometimes they change without you
> doing anything.
>

If you include the device naming conventions for removable drives,
then yes, nothing is fixed.

Hard drives mounted inside the system are less likely to change unless
you play with settings in the boot PROM, but if you're going to take a
proverbial monkey wrench to the works, nothing is sacred.

> So I don't see that as being more persistent than UUID or LABEL. This list
> is referred to by others and is searched when googled, so I hope we can
> provide correct information and if we are not too sure, we should state so.
>

Technically, the only correct statement one can definitively make in
this regard is that nothing is fixed, nothing is constant, and any
time someone changes the hardware there is a risk of debilitating
change.  This applies to device ids, UUIDs and LABELs each in their
own way.

So, to correct myself, if you assume that the fixed hard drives in a
system will stay in the same place as long as they work and are not
shifted around, which is generally a fair assumption, then the device
ids assigned by the kernel at run time (which makes them effectively
volatile anyway) are less likely to change than if other operations
that are less mechanically rigid are applied, such as formatting
(which sets UUIDs) or labeling (which is completely arbitrary).

Or must we disagree on this, too?  :-)

> While it's true that you can always follow your own way, regardless of any
> merit or lack of it, it is always bad advise and unethical if it is
> followed by wrong information.

It can be argued that everything a person posts is wrong unless it is
so tightly nailed down in what will end up looking like legal-speak
that it can't be misinterpreted, but I suggest that in that case it is
also unreadable to the average person and hence not practical or
usable.  What I said wasn't wrong per se, it was incomplete.  I hope
the above restatement will settle that issue?

If not, flail away what you think will help.