Comment 23 for bug 106209

Take a look at /etc/fstab and see if the swap is being specified via a UUID or not. Then use "swapon -s" to see if you are actually using swap. Fortunately, if the swap partition isn't found, the system will stlil boot correctly. I agree that there's no point in changing the UUID for the swap partition --- actually the right thing to do is if there is a valid swap signature, the install procedure should simply skip the mkswap entirely.

For filesystems, the reason why we change the UUID when we reformat the partition is because it is fundamentally a different filesystem at one point. For example, suppose at one point the filesystem contains the critical data files for a MySQL e-commerce database. Now suppose a college intern is given the root password to the server and typo's a mke2fs command, and blows away the filesystem and uses it to restore some backup tapes. Fundamentally, that filesystem now contains something else. Hence, it should have a new UUID.