[Bug 423625] Re: Karmic alpha 4 hangs at boot before GRUB with characters sequence

[Colin Watson]

In general we can't ensure that the partition number sequence
corresponds to the physical order on the disk. The reason for that is as
follows. Consider an existing installation:

 1 - data
 2 - other operating system

Let us imagine that we resize partition 1 to make room for Ubuntu. Now
we have essentially two choices (ignoring issues of primary/logical
partitions for the sake of brevity):

a)
 1 - data
 2 - swap
 3 - Ubuntu
 4 - other operating system

b)
 1 - data
 3 - swap
 4 - Ubuntu
 2 - other operating system

The problem with a) is that we have just changed the partition number of
the other operating system. In very many cases, this will confuse that
operating system and it won't be able to boot. People rightly consider
it unacceptable when an Ubuntu installation renders another operating
system unbootable. Thus, we have to go for b), operating a policy that
we do not change the partition number of any existing partition simply
because we insert other partitions physically before it.

Thus, GRUB needs to tolerate out-of-order partitions.

-- 
Karmic alpha 4 hangs at boot before GRUB with characters sequence
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/423625
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