Udev rules and the management of the plumbing layer

BTW, it's the kernel itself that decides what is sda and what is sdb. Udev just uses the
kernel names for such devices.

Udev also sets up symlinks in /dev/by-{id,path,uuid,label} that will always point at the
device containing the correct filesystem. These, or the UUID= or LABEL= syntax should be used
when referring to your filesystems.

Maybe it's just that the installed still uses the 'legacy' device paths in the /etc/fstab file
that it generates. That should really be changed, but it may well be too late in the release
cycle to start on it now.