Bug#612402: upgraded systems won't boot from UUID volumes

[Ben Hutchings]

On Sun, 2013-04-07 at 16:19 +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> On 07/04/13 15:47, Neil Williams wrote:
> > On Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:25:43 +0200 Daniel Pocock
> > <daniel at pocock.com.au> wrote:
> > 
> >> I notice this bug was downgraded below the RC threshold and
> >> appears to have been missed so far:
> > 
> > It was only pushed to RC status by your request and then almost 
> > immediately moved back to original severity of Important by one of
> > the maintainers.
> > 
> > It is up to the maintainers to assign severity of bugs. Why have
> > you not asked the maintainers of their opinion of the severity?
> > 
> 
> Because they already downgraded below the RC status, so I'm curious if
> other people have reason to believe there is a problem.
> 
> I have only come across a few systems with UUID in fstab,

If you *don't* use LVM this is normal, as device names are not stable.

> but if
> somebody else is aware of widespread use of this, now is probably the
> time to comment.

I just did some install and upgrade tests:

1. I installed squeeze and selected guided partitioning using LVM.  The
installer put /dev/mapper/* names in /etc/fstab (and also created a
non-LVM /boot formatted as ext2!).  Upgrading to wheezy worked fine.

2. I installed squeeze and selected 'manual partitioning' and created a
pure LVM layout with root and swap LVs.  This also resulted in
/dev/mapper/* names in /etc/fstab.

3. Running 'dpkg-reconfigure linux-base' did not change these device
names, as expected (it should only touch IDE and SCSI device names).

So it seems that this is only going to be an issue if users take the
unusual step of changing /etc/fstab to refer to LVs by UUID.  But maybe
there are management tools that do that as a matter of course?

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
I'm not a reverse psychological virus.  Please don't copy me into your sig.
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