I tracked down an unbootable karmic upgrade to this.
Why not having by-uuid symlinks makes the system unbootable: mountall blocks (can't find the /boot partition in by-uuid), and upstart doesn't start the system. Why udev doesn't create the by-uuid symlinks: udev relies on libblkid1 from util-linux to create them. sudo blkid -p $DEVICE says the device has ambiguous uuid. sudo BLKID_DEBUG=0xffff blkid -p $DEVICE says there's a vfat uuid in there as well, in the first 512 bytes that ext2/ext3 ignores. How to make sure by-uuid symlinks still work in karmic: Having mke2fs zero the first 512 bytes of a partition would solve the problem, but for new installs only. IMHO, the consequences are important enough that this should be disambiguated using the partition table. (To start the system anyway, try the not so simple hacks at http://upstart.ubuntu.com/wiki/OMGBroken and edit /etc/fstab to use /dev/sdXN notation for the uuids that don't work.) ** Also affects: util-linux (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- not all disks created in /dev/disks/by-uuid https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/442491 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs