On Monday 24 November 2008 16:53:15 David A. Bandel wrote: > GMail wrote:
> The issue remains, as long as LILO exists in any distro, as important as > booting is, it needs to be included. If you upgrade any of the 50+ > servers I've installed in the past 2-3 years and forget to run lilo, > have a good time if you don't know how to spell LILO. Perhaps you can > eventually get in and install GRUB. And the first time I run lilo, > you're back to wondering why the new kernel you just installed won't > boot again. That is one and the only reason I would promote to keep lilo in the objectives, I only use grub, I like the fallback option for remote kernel upgrade, but that is another story. Sometimes I have to go and fix or manage a customers server, for example, a customer with 2000 slackware servers asked to another consulting company to help them fix a issue with a raid controler, the "professional" could not solve the problem because he didnt know lilo, he didnt know about the configs and that he needs to execute grub after modify lilo.conf, this "professional" messed up the sistem. > > If LPIC removes LILO it won't be taught. If a new generation of admins > is not taught about LILO, the LPIC exam and LPIC cert becomes, to me, > irrelevant. Lilo is very important, I do have customers with mandrake servers, they cant upgrade, they use lilo, they have a lot of slackware servers, If you remove lilo from the objetives I really wont hire a LPI Professional who doesnt know how to solve basic boot problems. > > > I agree that the nomenclature is a major pain in the butt, but I also > > submit that it is a much lesser evil than using any specific OS > > conventions. Can you imagine the uproar if you had to describe disks to > > grub using Solaris conventions on a Linux system? The majority of people > > I know who are LPI certified can't even described how Solaris does it! > > Heck, I even have to look it up every time. > > > >> Not even boot loaders should be geek elitist garbage. But just because > >> seemingly every distro has GRUB as default on x86 systems doesn't mean > >> LILO has become irrelevant. > > > > I never said it is. It works, it gets the job done and if that's cool for > > you, then go ahead and use it. But that doesn't mean it should go in the > > exam. > > > > Example: I admin 9 caching servers dealing with around 6000 queries a > > second each. I've given up explaining to the youth brigade why they do > > not run bind. But I'll tell you - bind instantly slows to a crawl under > > that load and hard limits to 130 queries a second. So we use cns and take > > the license fee in the > > (and I can tell you why it is so limited, so what?) > > > shorts. > > > > Should I now ask for cns to be included in the exam because it's a > > carrier-grade caching name server and that industry has heavily adopted > > Linux? This is obviously a stupid statement, doubly so because my > > machines run FreeBSD, but you get the idea. > > Actually, under your circumstances, I'd run OpenBSD and there are a few > fast dns servers out there (powerdns comes to mind). Your choice. But > w/ 6000 queries/sec, you need to spread the load a little more (IMHO). > Do the math. If one goes down you get a significant load increase on > the others. > > And I would lobby against all but BIND for a simple reason, after a > system is running, you get to choose BIND, djbdns, etc (there are 15+ > web servers, a goodly number of mail servers, but what is the industry > standard?). > > >> When Caldera (the first to use this) came out with it as default in 1997 > >> (IIRC), it crossed my eyes and I thought: gee, I hope the folks writing > >> this start using standard OS conventions for disks (let the software do > >> the work instead of me). Over 10 years later and I can't understand why > >> the ridiculous conventions persist. ANYONE can read and understand > >> lilo.conf (assuming they read English). But when I saw GRUB (having > >> admin'd SUN and ULTRIX for some 10 years at this time) my head hurt. It > >> still hurts when I see it and why I immediately change it. I don't need > >> my job made harder on purpose. > > > > Again you miss the point and assume a convention exists where there is > > none. > > > > LILO is also Linux and x86 specific. I could be wrong, but I don't think > > you can put LILO on a machine from FreeBSD dual-booting Linux and > > FreeBSD. > > Well if I can't I've done the impossible (OK, it was OpenBSD I dual > booted, but it was *BSD). The beauty of LILO is, it will boot > _anything_ that runs on x86 (for other architectures we have milo, silo, > etc.). GRUB is limited in that it has to understand the underlying > filesystem. LILO doesn't care about the underlying filesystem, it > points to a place on the disk. Fundamentally different. No fundamental > difference in DNS servers if you expect clients to be able to get an > answer from the server (that's what the RFCs are all about). > > > Not everyone has your use-cases, so I'll say it again: you are free to > > use LILO if you wish. It does a fine job for you but is way too > > restrictive to be used in the wider arena. Grub can, the distros > > recognize this and the vast overwhelming majority have made the default. > > Therefore grub logically belongs in the exam and LILO logically does not. > > Lilo is restrictive? I would have said the opposite, but that because > so many newbies can't remember to run lilo, they changed to GRUB > _despite_ its countless limitations. > > Not sure where the logic is here -- I'm still missing it. > > I have fought against including software in the exam. This is one I > will continue to fight FOR (probably the only one). For any other > service I can choose to use something else. > > >>> [snip] > >>> > >>>>> Also grub is written in C, lilo is assembly. I know which one I find > >>>>> easier to maintain and add features to. > >>>> > >>>> I haven't the time or desire to maintain or add features to lilo, > >>>> grub, or any of a thousand plus other packages. I install the > >>>> binaries and run with them. If I tinker w/ 3 packages a year, that's > >>>> a lot. > >>>> > >>>> Lilo needs to stay in the exam. > >>> > >>> Well, that's your opinion. Others might disagree. The only sane > >>> criterion I've seen yet in this thread to decide if lilo stays or goes > >>> is "how many distros use it by default" and perhaps "how many people > >>> use it in real life"? > >>> > >>> If you find it useful, that's great - continue to do so. You have the > >>> same choice w.r.t. qmail or djbdns[1] for example. But that doesn't > >>> mean it is sufficiently pervasive to warrant inclusion in a generic > >>> exam. > >> > >> Again, GRUB/LILO are not convenience items. I can run a server without > >> it running DNS or even SMTP. But I can't run it at all if I can't boot > >> it, so your argument is irrelevant. > > > > What the living blazes are your talking about? How can my argument > > possibly be irrelevant when I'm saying LILO is not in sufficient > > wide-spread use to warrant inclusion on an exam and you are talking about > > getting the machine to boot? > > > > I really don't care which boot loader you use. I assume that you are > > sufficiently knowledgeable in these matters to make up your own mind. > > But, and this is a big but, the only perspective you have offered is your > > own, and that is simply not good enough for inclusion on an exam on that > > sole basis. > > > >> If a new LPIC-1 admin enters my > >> shop, upgrades the kernel and reboots without running lilo, he's going > >> to have a hard time recovering (while I wonder how he passed the exam). > > > > No, he will not have a hard time at all. The machine will simply boot > > into the previous kernel, not the new one, from where he can run lilo and > > boot again. Inconvenient, yes. Train smash, hardly. > > No, it won't. It will boot the old kernel _only_ if the admin knows > about LILO (and hits a key to stop the default boot which is usually to > the new kernel). And if he knows nothing about LILO (not on the exam, > then not taught), he'll be a signicant amount of downtime rescuing > something that doesn't need rescuing. > > > Unless he, the distro, or whoever wrote your deployment software is > > sufficiently brain-dead to have deleted the old kernel files before > > testing them at least once. [Yes, I have seen this in real-life > > production...] > > [snip] > > > I'm waiting for the return of the dodo. That ain't gonna happen either, > > for pretty much the same reason. > > Wow. I didn't know LILO was extinct (are we living in the same > reality?). Not sure what that LILO upgrade was that just came out last > week. I'll be sure to pass on your comments to the developer, though. > I'm sure he'd like to know LILO is extinct. > > And if that's true, then we need a new bootloader, cause if the answer > is GRUB ... it was the wrong question. > > > > > David A. Bandel -- Jorge Armando Medina Computación Gráfica de México Web: www.e-compugraf.com Tel: 55 51 40 72 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG Key: 1024D/28E40632 2007-07-26 GPG Fingerprint: 59E2 0C7C F128 B550 B3A6 D3AF C574 8422 28E4 0632
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