According to "Eduardo E. Horvath" <eeh@one-o.com> :
> 
> You do not want to track device by serial number.  One of the purposes of
> this is to be able to replace a broken device by an identical one that
> works.  If you use serial numbers then the new disk I plugged in to
> replace the old one that failed, that has exaclty the same information on
> it as the old one, has a different device ID and device node.  My fstab is
> now useless.
> 
Agreed, but perhaps it is possible to hold enough information to detect 
the _change_ and prompt the user for assitance.  We can hardly expect a 
kernel to make assumptions in the light of changed hardware.

My stance?  I'd _simply_love_ a microkernel that sets up the device 
drivers _ahead_ of the kernel, and a kernel that supplies the higher 
levels.  Note that this is retrogressive, seeing as that's how the BIOS 
is intended to be used :-)

++L