[gentoo-user] Can't find init due to inconsistent drive order

[Grant Edwards]

I've just recently run into a problem where sometimes when a machine
boots, the kernel can't find init.  This appears to be because my grub
configuration line says "root=/dev/sda5" and _sometimes_ the drive
that contains my root partition is sdb instead of sda. AFAICT, for the
past 30 years the linux kernel was 100% consistent in the order that
hard drives were labelled -- but recently that has seems to have
changed.

I use partition labels in my fstab, so that's not a problem, but after
all these years, the kernel still doesn't know how to grok parition
labels.

Are we really expected now to set up an initrd just so that the kernel
can find the root partition??

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I wonder if I could
                                  at               ever get started in the
                              gmail.com            credit world?