Re: grub/lilo - Re: Whats with this new Debian installer?

[John Summerfield]

donno .. i never used lilo on the command line to boot a specific kernel
i always configure a lilo.xxx.conf and use lilo -C lilo.xxx.conf for
whatever it's supposed to have as options on the next boot
 

the next boot and then revert to the usual default. I don't have a 
system with lilo to had, but I think it's
lilo -R <something>
   

lilo -R something will boot only once ... 2nd time around will be back
to that it would be normally
 

I thought that's what I said.
I don't know what you mean. I do know that with grub or LILO in the MBR 
you  can boot either from a partition.
   

as long as you can write the MBR correctly... that is true ...
problem is the MBR is NOT always written correctly .. both grub and lilo
fails to write the proper data under some random cases
 

Not something I've observed.
- needs to know the filesystem on the disk ( a bad thing )
     

Arguable, but in practice it's not bothered me.
   

its a problem if you're using ext3 or reiserfs or xfs and the kernel
you're booting doesnt understand that fs, than you will have to have
fun with reiserfs and more fun with booting a raid system
 

Eh? How do use use ext2 or reiserfs or xfs with a kernel that doesn't 
understand it?

 

        == a very very bad thing to require /usr/lib to boot ...
     

but it doesn't.
   

ah .. but it does ... default grub ... just installed sarge from
cdrom as of a botu 2-3 weeks ago ...and each time grub says it's
wanting to see /usr/lib/stage1 when doing grub-install /dev/hda
 

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg --listfiles grub | grep /usr
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/grub
/usr/share/doc/grub/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/grub/NEWS.gz
/usr/share/doc/grub/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/grub/BUGS
/usr/share/doc/grub/README
/usr/share/doc/grub/TODO
/usr/share/doc/grub/copyright
/usr/share/doc/grub/examples
/usr/share/doc/grub/examples/menu.lst
/usr/share/doc/grub/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/grub/THANKS.gz
/usr/share/doc/grub/README.Debian.gz
/usr/share/man
/usr/share/man/man1
/usr/share/man/man1/mbchk.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/mkbimage.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man8
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-md5-crypt.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-terminfo.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/update-grub.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-floppy.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-reboot.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/grub.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-install.8.gz
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$
Hmm. No executables there. Where is stage1?
Oh, look!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg --listfiles grub | grep stage1
/lib/grub/i386-pc/e2fs_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/fat_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/ffs_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/iso9660_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/jfs_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/minix_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/reiserfs_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/ufs2_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/vstafs_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/xfs_stage1_5
/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage1
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$
You do this once:
grub-install /dev/hda
and ordinarily it's done by the installer.
If you find you need to copy stuff into /boot yourself then you're doing 
something wrong.

        - moving it to /boot/grub fixes the problem
 

the grub install script does just that.
it does or it might not ... i dont care, its obviously not doing
it when installing from disk1 and disk2 of the 13 disk cdrom set
 

OTOH Lilo doesn't have the capability.
   

i think it does ... fedora uses those [long] silly syntax for naming disk
partitions
 

There's a nice little script to do that too. And you can use it with any 
computer, as I needed to a few weeks ago.
   

"little side scripts" won't help people if it didn't install properly
in the first place ...
and one should be able to write one faster than it'd take one to
google for anything to get their pc booted
anything that prevents a "non-geek" to install and boot properly
is a bad thing or even better .. 
	"a non-geek should be able to install and boot without any
	problems or worries"  ( 95% of the market is non-techies )

 

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg --listfiles grub | grep /sbin
/sbin
/sbin/grub
/sbin/grub-install
/sbin/grub-md5-crypt
/sbin/grub-terminfo
/sbin/update-grub
/sbin/grub-floppy
/sbin/grub-reboot
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$
If you can "apt-get install grub" it's there for you. No silly side 
scripts. it's standard part of the package.


--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
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