A discussion with Steve suggested looking at when udev updates /dev/disk/by-uuid - has something changed that stops that directory being refreshed after partman-base is done (or at least before bootstrap-base starts)?
I ran some stretch/jessie comparison installs on the following VM system: amd64, 1cpu, 1G memory sata port 0 - 2G ssd sata port 1 - 64M hot-pluggable device sata port 2 - 128G hard disk netinst preseeded install None of the disk devices have partition tables at the start. The partitioning recipe is: 1 real partition of size 1G for / 1 real partition of size 127G for an LVM physical volume containing all the other partitions. (It's important to make sure the hard disk is large enough for the expert recipe to fit; otherwise the installer defaults to 1 real partition for /boot 1 lvm volume named 'root' for everything else ) What seems to happen on stretch is /dev/disk/by-uuid NEVER EXISTS during installation in this circumstance. I did see it in other installation paths I tried. Right after all the partitioning is complete and debootstrap is running, /dev/sd* and /dev/disk looks like this: # ls -l /dev/sd* /dev/disk /dev/disk/by-uuid 2>/dev/null brw------- 1 root root 8, 0 Aug 4 07:08 /dev/sda brw------- 1 root root 8, 16 Aug 4 07:08 /dev/sdb brw------- 1 root root 8, 32 Aug 4 07:08 /dev/sdc brw------- 1 root root 8, 33 Aug 4 07:08 /dev/sdc1 brw------- 1 root root 8, 34 Aug 4 07:08 /dev/sdc2 /dev/disk: drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 140 Aug 4 07:08 by-id drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Aug 4 07:08 by-partuuid drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 140 Aug 4 07:08 by-path /dev/disk/by-partuuid: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Aug 4 07:08 d7e0b3f5-01 -> ../../sdc1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Aug 4 07:08 d7e0b3f5-02 -> ../../sdc2 After installation the system is unbootable because it specifies root=/dev/sdc1 in the boot line rather root=UUID=<some-uuid> The system can be made to boot by and editing the boot line in grub to be root=/dev/sda1 In /etc/fstab the / partition is correctly mounted by UUID; so after hacking the boot line, the system boots correctly. So it seems that somewhere in grub-installer, the conversion between device file and UUID is failing and the code is falling back to the device file. Strangely, the fstab comment about which device / was on during installation correctly says it was /dev/sdc1. Doing the same install with jessie, the boot line is written correctly using the root=UUID form. I checked and /dev/disk/by-uuid exists by the time debootstrap is running, but /dev/disk/by-partuuid is never seen. # ls -l /dev/sd* /dev/disk /dev/disk/by-uuid 2>/dev/null brw------- 1 root root 8, 0 Aug 4 07:54 /dev/sda brw------- 1 root root 8, 16 Aug 4 07:54 /dev/sdb brw------- 1 root root 8, 32 Aug 4 07:54 /dev/sdc brw------- 1 root root 8, 33 Aug 4 07:54 /dev/sdc1 brw------- 1 root root 8, 34 Aug 4 07:54 /dev/sdc2 /dev/disk: drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 140 Aug 4 07:54 by-id drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Aug 4 07:54 by-uuid /dev/disk/by-uuid: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Aug 4 07:54 dc5e366d-94f3-4d8b-82df-df40962bb889 -> ../../sdc1 I hope this is some help with moving this problem forward Vince
