[Letux-kernel] Subtle issue with U-Boot and kernel and SD card UUIDs

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi Marek,
regarding the "LABEL=" I think it is not handled by U-Boot. U-Boot
only has some support for partition UUIDs.

>> 
>> What I have seen while going through the code: there is some CONFIG_PARTITION_TYPE_GUID
>> Maybe we need to define it?
> Maybe yes.

Doesn't seem to make a difference.

> Did you try to use GPT partitioning? UUID then should be "real" UUID.

No, we have used MBR for all OMAP3/4/5/am335x devices so far.

I am not sure if the "MLO in FAT partition" approach works for GPT at all.

I have tried to find some background information about the MBR and UUID without
great success... I start to hate open source because of the closed (aka missing)
documentation :)

And to increase confusion, there even seems to be a difference between
root=UUID=... and root=PARTUUID=...

	https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Persistent_block_device_naming#Boot_managers

So to all my knowledge so far:

* DOS knows a "disk label" - but that is not the partition UUID we need here.
* U-Boot does not provide a good uuid for MBR based SD cards
* OMAP needs a MBR formatted SD
* the "UUID" shown by kernel blkid might be randomly assigned (have not tried to find out)
* (s)fdisk has no mechanism to define UUIDs for partitions - tune2fs could, but that is not what U-Boot can identify

By the way: this UUID thing is a strong argument against creating SD cards
by dd-ing some .img to the raw disk. They will all share the UUIDs and are not
uniquely identified any more.

I have checked again the U.Boot code of print_part_dos() and it appears as it it
should be able to print some "disksig" if CONFIG_PARTITION_UUIDS is enabled. But
it is difficult to understand the code.

BR,
Nikolaus