Re: [patch] search for partition using GPT GUID

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 01:32:15PM +0100, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> It has been explained that using the NTFS UUID is about equivalent of
> using the volume label. If it is sufficient why are we using UUIDs at
> all? We can use the much more readable labels everywhere and get rid
> of those long and impractical UUIDs completely.

Volume labels (in the general case; I don't know specifically about
NTFS) are set by system administrators by hand.  GRUB cannot assume that
any filesystem has a volume label, or that they don't clash.  (For
example, Red Hat's installer used to have the unwise policy of setting
labels to match the mount point; thus two Red Hat installations on the
same machine would produce label collisions.)

The appropriate policy for use of labels is to permit them to be used
when requested by the system administrator, but not to use them by
default.

I posted an analysis of all the generic available methods for filesystem
identification to debian-boot a while back:

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2008/12/msg00338.html

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden