Disabling Disk UUIDs on Debian 6.0 Onwards


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Debian 6.0 onwards uses UUIDs (which are symlinks in the /dev/disk/by-uuid directory) by default instead of traditional /dev disk names. This can be awkward on a system with removable drives which get changed often.

UUIDs can be disabled by editing /etc/fstab to use standard device names. Grub also needs to be reconfigured.

With grub-pc (the default grub version) edit /etc/default/grub and uncomment the GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true line.

It may also be necessary to add the following to /etc/grub/default:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="resume=/dev/sdXY"
where /dev/sdXY is the swap partition.

Don't forget to run update-grub after making changes.

With grub-legacy, the /boot/grub/menu.lst file can be edited manually to use a standard /dev name instead of a UUID for the root filesystem. Note that every time update-grub is run this file will be rewritten with the old UUIDs, so it's a good idea to keep a copy of the edited file.



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Last updated November 4 2017