Anthony E. Caudel wrote:
> Michael Schmarck wrote:
>> · Anthony E. Caudel <tony.caudel@(protected)>:
>>
>>
>>> I have noticed in some distros (namely Ubuntu) that the fstab uses
>>> UUID's rather than /dev references. Is this a better way?
>>>
>>> Does it eliminate the problem of /dev references changing when
>>> another drive, i.e., an external USB drive, is plugged in? The /dev
>>> references may change but the UUID's in fstab wouldn't, would they?
>>>  
>>
>> Correct. UUIDs are universally unique (as the name already "suggests"
>> *g*)
>> and thus, there cannot be a clash.
>>
>> Michael Schmarck
>>  
> Any chance that GRUB will ever use these? I have a sata hd carrier
> and when I reboot with it plugged in, grub sees the disk order
> differently and gives me problems (I either have to get a grub command
> line and boot manually or use a Grub boot floppy).

As long as your BIOS is passing off control to the correct drive when
both are plugged in a boot, what about using GRUB's fallback feature?
Say your bootable partition is normally (hd0,0), but with your external
drive plugged in the proper partition becomes (hd1,0) instead. You can
duplicate your GRUB config with (hd1,0) for the root entry and specify
that as a fallback option. Then as long as GRUB gets control your
system is still bootable.

If the BIOS is trying to boot off the removable drive, I suppose you
could install GRUB on it too with a similar setup, but that obviously
doesn't scale well beyond a single computer with a known boot configuration.

--
Josh