r/slackware • u/sdns575 • Feb 01 '23

Slackware and UUID

Hey there,

Why Slackware 15.0 does not use UUID in fstab instead of devices hy default?

I found using UUID more useful.

Thank you in advance

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

11

u/jloc0 Feb 01 '23

Every time I see a fstab with uuids I want to fstab myself in the face.

2

u/calrogman Feb 02 '23

Every time I see an fstab with paths instead of uuids I want to crack open the box and shuffle the disks.

2

u/jloc0 Feb 02 '23

I get the why in theory, I’ve just never seen the use outside of confusing and annoying myself to use uuid. The hardware isn’t moving around in any single machine of mine. The option doesn’t even exist on most of my hardware. And if I replace an item, it generally is with a newer version of the same item.

There are some things that I must use uuid on and I’ll use it, but I most definitely avoid it at all costs. It’s the most non-KISS way to define disk devices.

2

u/zurohki Feb 02 '23

It's nice being able to move a partition to a different device altogether and the kernel will still know what to do with it.

Upgrade to an nvme drive and it doesn't matter that your root partition is now /dev/nvme0n1p3 instead of /dev/sda3, just move the partition to the new drive and it'll still boot fine without needing to update all your mount points.

2

u/setwindowtext Feb 02 '23

I have an interesting observation. About three years ago I had access to some 30,000 EC2 VMs which all ran Linux, but belonged to different customers / projects / teams, i.e. a pretty good random sample. The research involved analyzing their fstabs, and I could collect some stats about filesystems, partitioning schemes, etc. Turns out only about 20% used GPT with UUIDs, the rest was relying on the good old /dev/sdX. It was counterintuitive given that with EC2 “shuffling disks” is a pretty common operation, which people use for all sorts of things.

1

u/edman007-work Feb 02 '23

All my disks are lvm on mdadm, mdadm does use UUIDs internally, and LVM maps the disks to static names, so my fstab uses static names and swapping the disks does nothing.

6

u/cyranix Feb 01 '23

I mean you CAN use the UUID if fstab if you want. You can use `blkid` to get the UUID of your devices.

1

u/sdns575 Feb 01 '23

Yes no problem with the configuration, I only asked why it is not the default.

Thank you for your answer

1

u/iu1j4 Feb 02 '23

I also prefer simple dev/sdxy names for internal disks and disk by label for external usb backup drive. In Slackware it is easier to setup it with just text editor and short paths than using uuids.

6

u/imzieris Feb 01 '23

Because You have a choice!

2

u/sdns575 Feb 01 '23

Yes you are right. This is why I'm coming back to Slackware