[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 11/24/2008 05:53:15 PM: David A. Bandel > GMail wrote: > > On Monday 24 November 2008 13:23:27 David A. Bandel wrote: > > > However, LILO is not in widespread use and is not the default on > anything but > > a handful of distros. That fact alone should warrant it being removed from > > LPI's exam objectives, as the exam seeks to be representative of what is in > > widespread use. > > If it is the default on _one_ distro, that's enough. You can't admin > what you can't boot. >
Portage is the default package system on at least one distro, but LPI doesn't test it. > > Boot loader are ideally OS-agnostic, and grub tries to go this by natively > > booting anything that is multi-boot complaint, and using chainloading for > > anythign that isn;t. > > > > > 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. > > > > > > > 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. Part of the real problem is the size of the MBR. this means that either GRUB, LILO, or even the OS/2 boot loader need some other information that they can find somewhere on the hard drive. If you don't tell LILO you updated the kernel, it doesn't know about it. If you don't tell the MBR that you moved GRUB's stage 1 record, it doesn't know about it. It's dead easy to create a bootable grub diskette, CD or probably USB key (I haven't tried the last) and then boot it and find GRUB config files and load them, editing if necessary. Many of my systems can boot any one of a choice of OSes and I usually keep a small primary partition for GRUB use and then have each OS install its boot loader of choice int eh Partion Boot record (PBR) for the partition. My master GRUB simply chainloads to the PBR. As I think about it, it's kinda like the old OS/2 boot loader operation :-) It's also dead easy to use the Windows boot loader and have it boot GRUB and then have GRUB boot other OSes (for those Windows fans who like their old familiar boot screen). I haven't looked at how to do that with LILO or even whether it can be done. Does anyone know if GRUB2 (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/) is actually being worked on? I think we're really discussing GRUB legacy here. Ian Shields Ph.D. Linux Technologist, ISV & Developer Relations IBM Corp Research Triangle Park, NC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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