bug#35995: [wishlist] bootloader-configuration, avoid use of /dev/sd?

[Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu>]

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Hello,

Following a recent discussion on Guix-devel [1] I'm "forwarding here" a
proposal to switch from /dev/sd? to (target (uuid ...)) in
bootloader-configuration operating-system declaration

This is a recap of current situation: the installer usually uses
/dev/sda as target for grub-install (and bootloader-cofiguration) but it
happened to me that on a machine /dev/sda was the USB media, not the
target HD

The fact is that it's not guaranteed that /dev/sd? always corresponds to
the same device

This is where we are with the discussion:

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Hello!
>
> Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> skribis:
>
>> But wait! There's the /dev/disk/by-id/ tree, I did not notice it until
>> now! :-)
>>
>> That's the solution:
>>
>>
>>   (bootloader
>>     (bootloader-configuration
>>       (bootloader grub-bootloader)
>>       (target "/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-3600508b1001c75a3bebb04b23d19e249")
>>       (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))
>>
>> I did not test this but it smells like running, if Guix devels agree I
>> think Installer should adopt /dev/disk/by-id by default, sorry I'm not
>> able to propose a patch for this
>
> Ideally, we’d use an actual UUID object (or a string?) here rather than
> this Linux/udev-specific idiom.  So it would look like:
>
>   (bootloader-configuration
>     ;; …
>     (target (uuid …)))
>
> Would that work?
>
> I believe using Guile-Parted we could map it back to a /dev name.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Ludo’.



[1] Message-ID: <87o93mwr4b.fsf@gnu.org>
    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-05/msg00454.html

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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