Arch Linux

michaelks

Member

Registered: 2009-01-26

Posts: 68

grub and uuid for the windows case

I was very glad to discover that it is possible to use uuid's instead of the old (hdx,y) in /boot/grub/menu.lst (as well as in fstab), like this :
title  Arch Linux
uuid 210f9206-0b3d-46a2-80e6-0a8a0856a3a9
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/210f9206-0b3d-46a2-80e6-0a8a0856a3a9 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

That is because i've a removable ide disk that i use for backup.This wasn't a problem on my old slackware because it was always /dev/hdb, the other resident ide /dev/hda, and the two sata , /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. Now on arch, to my surprise everyone is sd, the first disk is either sdd or sdc (starting from the bottom then), depending on whether the removable disk is on the tray or not, so uuid was more than welcome, since i imagine that the grub (hdx,y) nomenclature  would also get messed up. Problem is, windows entry has this little trick to it, namely
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
and as far as i could search, there is no way to use uuid for disks, only partitions, since this identifier pertains to file systems, not hardware. So my question is, how can i boot windows in a removable disk situation , that is, how can i write those two lines in a way not affected by the number of disks present ??