After a recent dist-upgrade, I failed to mount /boot when rebooting.
Further investigation shows that /dev/disk/by-path has an entry for my
/boot as /dev/sda (rather than sda1). Updating to use the by-id in
/etc/fstab solves the problem, but I'm curious what changed and if
this is a known issue. I would guess that this is an issue with
changes in either udev or the kernel.

The partition table is a Sun disk label, which means that /dev/sda1
starts at sector 0 and the filesystem header thus starts in the same
place as if there were no partition table. I believe on my e450 that
this is in fact required for the boot partition, so I don't know that
there's an easy fix in the installer aside from defaulting to one of
the by-id options.

Copy/paste of relevant information below: ----------------------------------------------------------
root@alexandria:~# grep boot /etc/fstab
# /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installation #UUID=e952f794-4d8e-4bba-8c5a-851acdb5e886 /boot ext2
defaults 0 2
/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5005076506c6bd8a-part1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 2 root@alexandria:~# ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Oct 27 18:26
6194b363-9f57-401b-a3cb-ee4bc8895323 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Oct 27 18:26
704f946c-b8e8-4a00-9d18-c49b325cd7e3 -> ../../sda4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Oct 27 18:26
e952f794-4d8e-4bba-8c5a-851acdb5e886 -> ../../sda
root@alexandria:~# blkid
/dev/sda4: UUID="704f946c-b8e8-4a00-9d18-c49b325cd7e3" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda2: UUID="6194b363-9f57-401b-a3cb-ee4bc8895323"
BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda3: UUID="e952f794-4d8e-4bba-8c5a-851acdb5e886"
BLOCK_SIZE="1024" TYPE="ext2" PTTYPE="sun"
/dev/sda1: UUID="e952f794-4d8e-4bba-8c5a-851acdb5e886"
BLOCK_SIZE="1024" TYPE="ext2" PTTYPE="sun"
root@alexandria:~# parted /dev/sda p
Model: IBM DDYST1835SUN18G (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 18.1GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: sun
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Flags
1 0.00B 512MB 512MB ext2 boot
2 512MB 17.1GB 16.6GB ext4
4 17.1GB 18.1GB 1025MB linux-swap(v1)

root@alexandria:~#
----------------------------------------------------------

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Saturday 2023-10-28 08:30, Rick Mangus wrote:

The partition table is a Sun disk label, which means that /dev/sda1
starts at sector 0

(which it does not _have_ to)

and the filesystem header thus starts in the same
place as if there were no partition table.

yeah, that kind of speaks for itself how the by-{uuid,id,label} link can shift between sda <-> sda1.

I believe on my e450 that
this is in fact required for the boot partition

Not that I know of. It's pretty much like on x86, with sector 0
containing a few boot bytes to load "something else", irrespective
of a logical partitioning scheme superimposed on top.
What I had with my T1000 was: https://inai.de/2006/03/30

[if] there's an easy fix in the installer aside from defaulting to
one of the by-id options.

You could move the disk blocks down the line (intricate dd_rescue
operations) and modify the partition table to match it,
moving /boot so it does not start at 0.

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