A couple of weeks ago, I had a look at /etc/fstab for some reason. I was a little surprised to see that things have changed. Where partitions were labeled /dev/hda1 etc., now they look like this:-

# /dev/sda5 -- converted during upgrade to edgy
UUID=2350b9c8-c62a-4c50-b494-6c7db3438192 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

This confused me a bit, but I did not do anything about it. What worried me was how would I know which drive or partition was being referred to. I let this go until a discussion that mentioned /etc/fstab came up on my local LUG mailing list.

Well it would appear that the idea behind the change is that with the latest drive technologies, there are so many possible drive connections, what with multiple SATA, IDE, RAID etc, a new method of drive and partition naming was needed. The UUID referred to above is taken from the actual partition. Therefore, drives can be moved around without having to edit /etc/fstab each time.

To find out where these partitions are, or what the UUID of a partition may be, a quick look at /dev/disk should be the place to start.

I am not an authority on this. I am just writing this primarily as a memory aid for myself. If I have missed anything important, please add a comment below.