Re: device.map (Re: Next release?)

[Robert Millan]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:57:56PM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-07-22 at 23:36 +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 05:26:17PM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > This is mostly implemented already.  I sent a proof of concept in a mail
> > > > titled "[PATCH] disk/fs_uuid.c".
> > > > 
> > > > It will only search hard drives unless no match is found (in that case 
> > > > your
> > > > boot is broken, so you wouldn't care much that floppy is being probed 
> > > > ;-)
> > > 
> > > Then all be need it to have an option in grub-install to enable this
> > > logic.
> > 
> > Why an option?  Is there any situation in which it is known that boot will
> > be unreliable (because embed disk != /boot/grub disk), and in spite of that
> > you don't want UUIDs to be used?
> 
> I guess I was unclear.  It's not like I don't want the UUIDs to be used.
> I don't want users to create a cross-drive setup unknowingly or without
> knowing the consequences.  Failure of any of the drives will break the
> loading.  There are many temporary portable drives and flash devices.
> The intention of the user may be to make that drive bootable, not to
> create a configuration that would require both the internal and the
> external drives.
> 
> If the user is OK with the cross-drive install, using UUIDs should be
> either the default or the only option.

I don't think it's that unusual.  Let's take an example.  We have 1 PATA
disk and 1 SATA disk, and are installing GNU/Linux in it.  We only have
one /boot partition (or directory in /).  Turns out we have no idea which
of the two disks the BIOS will want to use for boot.  So the safest option
is to grub-install in both.  A consequence of this is that one of the two
installs is cross-disk.

And (provided that UUIDs are used), this setup is _completely_ reliable and
there's no reason to prevent the user from doing it, IMHO.

-- 
Robert Millan

<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What good is a phone call… if you are unable to speak?
(as seen on /.)