Interesting recovery frustrations

[Tom H]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:25 PM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 6:28 AM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> When reformatting?! Why not also include the possibility of swapping a
>> disk out and ending up with a different hardware ID?!
>>
> How does this not fit into "physically moving the drive connectors?"
> Don't confuse physical changes with software-induced modifications -
> there is a significant difference.
>
>> I recently had a box where the kernel module load order changed after
>> an update and the device names changed.
>>
> That sounds quite unusual to me, but it is indeed on a par with a
> hardware change that affects drive order - how often does a kernel
> module change affect drive ids?  Rarely.
>
>> So device names aren't more
>> persistent than UUIDs or labels (at least for that reason). For a
>> single install, filesystem UUIDs don't change except when you dual-,
>> triple-, quadruple-, ...-boot and you allow mkswap to run during the
>> install of the nth OS. The swap partition's UUID is then changed...
>
> When you generalize from a corner case, you weaken your own argument.
>
>> You seem to be agreeing with the earlier ranter about using device
>> names and thereby deviating from Ubuntu standards in a worse way than
>> enabling root because you can (CAN!) make a system unbootable.
>>
> If you insist on reading your own ideas into what I posted, you are
> free to do that but it doesn't make your words mine.  If you're
> *asking* if that's what I said, the answer is no.
>
> What I said is that I prefer to use labels for device naming and
> mounting. mainly because *I* decide what the labels are, not a
> formatter or the OS or the hardware.  *I* prefer that level of
> control.  Using labels I was able to recover and boot my Ubuntu.  If
> I'd had to go through at least one other round of live CD booting just
> to read the UUIDs and possibly get them wrong, I might have gone
> completely mad.  My labels gave me a shortcut that worked.  Others are
> free not to use that method, and if newer works for you, go for it,
> but don't expect everyone to.

I shouldn't have wasted any time on this thread...