[arch-general] Another 'gotta be something idiotic': trying to create bootable USB thumb drive

[Kyle]

According to Rashif Ray Rahman:
# -- with UUID. I dislike hardcoding label names as they are likely to
# change, but UUIDs are static (barring reformats).

I greatly prefer labels, because they are human readable, chosen by the
end user, and unless I'm totally misunderstanding how they work, only
change if the end-user manually changes them. The same label can even be
reused after a reformat, as long as it is specified exactly as it
appeard before the old filesystem was deleted. On the other hand, UUID's
are only computer readable, change on every format, and make absolutely
no sense to the end user when trying to figure out what drive or
partition contains what filesystem. The only problem I see with using
labels is some confusion that could possibly arise if you have a thumb
drive that contains a filesystem labeled archlinux inserted into a
computer with a  hard drive that also contains a filesystem labeled
archlinux. There would indeed be a host of problems when
/dev/disk/by-label/archlinux probably points to the wrong device or the
system doesn't know which device to symlink. However, in that case, when
creating the thumb drive and labeling its filesystem, it is better to
name it archthumb or another name that is equally recognizable, but
won't get confused with other filesystems on the machine. Sure I could
use UUID's here, but then if I need to go back and read /etc/fstab and
see something very long and unrecognizable, the chance of editing
something that will make my system completely unbootable increases
greatly. please correct me if I have missed something regarding
automatic or scripted changes to disk labels other than end-user
interactions with disk labeling tools or filesysten utilities.

BTW, the first thing I do as soon as I purchase any storage device,
whether it's a thumb drive, a memory card, an external hard drive or
anything else, is to use a labeling tool to give the filesystem a
recognizable, human readable name. There is nothing I like less than
trying to move files between FE20-8ED3 and C2FD-DE3B, which are both 8GB
drives, and both contain similar directory structures. It is much easier
to move the same files between human readable disk labels like "OLD-PC"
and "NEW-PC," although the labels I mention here are only arbitrary
names. Normally I use something that describes the device on which the
storage will be used most, or a brief name to indicate the files that
are on the disk.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"