Re: Installer: GUIX_IMAGE as /dev/sda on some hardware?

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr>]

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Giovanni,

Giovanni Biscuolo wrote:
>> /dev/xdyN names have never been safe to use in this way
>
> I'm not talking about partitions ;-)

Neither was I.  Force o' habit.  May your partitions never be in 
random order.

> According my faulty memory (I cannot reproduce it now)
> /dev/sd<something> is what the Installer writes in the 
> bootloader
> section of config.scm:
>
> --8<---------------cut 
> here---------------start------------->8---
>
>   (bootloader
>     (bootloader-configuration
>       (bootloader grub-bootloader)
>       (target "/dev/sda")
>       (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))
>

I didn't realise that our *installer* did this…  It shouldn't. 
Thanks for noting this.

> So it's pure coincidence that grub-install on /dev/sda succeedes 
> on the
> whole set of machines users are installing via USB media? :-O

‘Pure coincidence’ is too loaded.  It almost always works!  But 
your original question already illustrates how ‘almost always 
works’ leads to false inductions of ‘should work’.

The odds may be hugely in your favour, but why gamble at all?

>> you've discovered, they aren't to be relied on, and you should 
>> use 
>> labels or UUIDs instead.
>
> Labels and UUIDs are for volumes, not for the whole disk ;-)

…?  I must not be using the right terminology, but each drive has 
a ‘unique identifier’, and a human-readable label (if that human 
likes numbers, a lot) that isn't unique.

‘ID’ & ‘name’, then, fine, whatever we call it, my point remains 
:-P

Kind regards,

T G-R

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