Bug#389881: RC-ness of this bug

["peter green" <plugwash@P10Link.net>]

> That it's not a persistent means of identifying a filesystem.  
for most users fstab has always identified by rough position (e.g. hda=ide primary master), changing to a system based on partition IDs would mean a lot of relearning for admins (e.g. its no longer ok to backup a partition by dding it to another one)

>It 
> changes if
> you move the PCI device
true, not that i imagine people do that much.

>, it changes if you change the SCSI/IDE bus address
> of the drive
the same applied in the old hd? and sd? days, drives names changing when you change thier IDE/SCSI ids is something admins expect and are used to.

, it changes if the kernel changes the name of the storage
> subsystem used to access the device (on kernel upgrades)
true, i wish they'd stop behaving like that.

>, it breaks down
> miserably if you use fiberchannel.
never used fiberchanel so can't comment on this.


to clarify my position on the overall issue

i agree that this is too late for etch (sadly) 
by-path and by-id each have some pros and cons over each other but both are far better than the old scheme now that multiple controllers and usb devices in sd? are becoming the norm.
by-uuid and uuid's in fstab (which seem to achive the same) is a very bad idea, it means that using dd to back up a partition to another one could result in the wrong one being mounted with potentially disasterous consequences. It could also be a severe security issue with the help of a carefully crafted usb stick (especially in an environment where deployment is done by imaging).
labels suffer from the problems given above for uuids
users installing on expert and possiblly medium should be given the choice between traditional names and the various new options.