sd, sd, who's got the sd

[David Zeuthen]

On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 16:35 -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 16:11 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > Maybe everything would be a lot smoother in the future if we started
> > using UUID instead of LABEL for installs? Or at least picked some more
> > sensible labels such as "F7-/", "F7-/boot", "F7t3-/" etc. Maybe even
> > lurk in a "short UUID" there (ext3 fs labels are limited to 32 bytes
> > IIRC): for example "F7-1234abcd-/".
> 
> The talk has begun to switch to UUID for F8...  it's unfortunate largely
> because UUIDs are so inpenetrable and not memorable.  It's nice to be
> able to say LABEL=/ to boot from...
> UUID=a511eb56-c6a7-4afd-ae73-498bcb1909bc, err... yeah :)
> 
> But since we're limited to 16 character labels, there's not really much
> in the way of other options.  

Ah, ext3 labels are 16 bytes instead of 32. And I do agree using a full
UUID is hard to remember. So I'd still suggest using a smart label, e.g.

 <release>-<mount-point>-<uuid>

and truncate appropriately. For example "F8t1-/boot-12345",
"F8-/-123456789ab" or whatever. That's both descriptive and will have a
relatively large UUID. Also, make sure to always use four digits of the
UUID, e.g. truncate the target mount point, e.g.

 /some/filesystem/that/the/user/mounts/into/a/bizarre/and/long/mountpoint

if needed. Of course, it's a lot easier to just use the UUID :-)

     David