Making Debian Etch boot with UUID, not hardcoded blockdevicename
You got additional disk controllers in your server and the etch kernel is fucking up your devicenames from time to time.
Suddenly when you reboot the etch kernel decides to make /dev/sda become /dev/sdf etc.
Ubuntu has learned from this and they use UUID.
This is a unique ID the filesystem becomes, and when you boot, you really want to catch the right device for the root filesystem, or get a crappy Busybox shell.
This is how you implement it on Debian Etch (and possibly Lenny, if its not default there either):
fittafeis:~# /lib/udev/vol_id /dev/sda1
ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=ext3
ID_FS_VERSION=1.0
ID_FS_UUID=3abbdf59-4a9e-4be1-ac56-f474609e637c
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=
Now edit this line in /boot/grub/menu.lst:
From: # kopt=root=/dev/sda1 ro
To: # kopt=root=UUID=3abbdf59-4a9e-4be1-ac56-f474609e637c ro
Then run update-grub and it will update all your kernel entries using UUID 
Tags: blockdevice, debian, etch, uuid
