Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
I haven't cited a "variety of ills" because there aren't a variety of them. There's just one: assuming that drive device names will remain the same on every reboot, every time, forever. That one ill can result in a multitude of problems, but they all stem from that one error. And they're all avoidable by simply not making that mistake.
All I can say is that your description of my 26 years' experience in using Linux in precisely that way as a 'mistake' (recipe for problems) has found no match in my particular experience, under the constraints described.
A SHA1 or MD5 or whatever hash is slightly shorter but no more human-readable than current UUIDs.
Looks substantially shorter, to me. Also, I'll guesstimate, too, that a substantially shorter hash than that would yield reasonable uniqueness.
I don't need to tell myself the bleeding obvious.
Again, 26 years' experience, as detailed, says otherwise.
Good for you. You're lucky.
I _very_ much doubt that. In fact, I smell a crock (a gross exaggeration).
However, assuming that your experience is universal is always a bad idea.
This I carefully did _not_ do. Please read more carefully.
Giving out advice based on that presumed universality is even worse.
And this I _very_ much did not do. Please read a great deal more carefully.
You mean by NOT having lots of drives in my machines?
I mean by being more careful about matching of drives to machines. Works for Me.[tm[