Anne Wilson wrote:
As for lilo and grub - I've never even tried grub, since lilo works fine for me.
I use GrUB because of its simplicity. Configuring means simply editing a
text file. Nothing to run afterwards. This makes chroot on rescue boots
unnecessary, which makes explaining rescue over the phone or email much
easier.
Another capability of grub that, afaik, does not come with lilo is command line completion from the grub prompt, allowing you to suss out partitions, kernels, etc. on a completely unknown system and boot from a grub floppy, e.g:
grub> root (hd [Tab] Possible disks are: hd0 hd1 hd2 hd3
grub> root (hd3, [Tab] Possible partitions are: Partition num: 0, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 4, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 5, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 6, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 7, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 8, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 9, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 Partition num: 10, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
grub> root (hd3,7) [Enter] Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
grub> kernel (hd3,7)/boot/ [Tab]
Possible files are: map initrd-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk.img grub memtest-3.0.bin System.map-2.4
.21-0.17mdkcustom kernel.h-2.4.21-0.17mdk config-2.4.21-0.17mdk message-graphic System.ma
p vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.17mdk message System.map-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk kernel.h-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk
config initrd.img System.map-2.4.21-0.17mdk vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk vmlinuz.old us.klt
kernel.h-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom config-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk vmlin
uz message-text initrd-2.4.21-0.17mdk.img initrd-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom.img kernel.h boot.2
208 config-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom
grub> kernel (hd3,7)/boot/vmlinuz [Enter] [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x134a74]
grub> initrd (hd3,7)/boot/ [Tab]
Possible files are: map initrd-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk.img grub memtest-3.0.bin System.map-2.4
.21-0.17mdkcustom kernel.h-2.4.21-0.17mdk config-2.4.21-0.17mdk message-graphic System.ma
p vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.17mdk message System.map-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk kernel.h-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk
config initrd.img System.map-2.4.21-0.17mdk vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk vmlinuz.old us.klt
kernel.h-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom config-2.4.21-0.18mm-mdk vmlin
uz message-text initrd-2.4.21-0.17mdk.img initrd-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom.img kernel.h boot.2
208 config-2.4.21-0.17mdkcustom
grub> initrd (hd3,7)/boot/initrd.img [Enter] [Linux-initrd @ 0x3bc000, 0x338cb bytes]
grub>
You can add kernel commands and boot with boot.
Not a common need but still neat. More commonly useful is the capability to edit from the menu screen, which I have used when a partition change or unusable kernel left the system unbootable from the old menu. Tom Berger wrote a page about grub's capabilities here: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/install/iboot2.html
Rolf
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