Re: Ugly GRUB menu entries
Also, on my system (as well as many others), I end up with 2 lines for
Windows 7 (or Vista, when I was using that)--only one of which boots. One
is the system partition; one is the main partition. Fixing this by hand
wouldn't be such a big deal if one didn't have to write part of a shell
script to do it, though manually editing a config file isn't exactly
"user-friendly" in any case. I'm sure everybody from the GRUB team has
seen this before, but I wonder if this could be incorporated as a graphical
selection option--perhaps show the user a preview of the menu, then allow
them to say "there are two entries; remove this one..." Also, a check box
to remove "(loader)" might be nice.
# Added to remove "(loader)" from Windows 7 entry
if [ "$LONGNAME" = "Windows 7 (loader)" ] && [ "${DEVICE}" = "/dev/sdb1" ]
then LONGNAME="Windows 7"
fi
# Added to remove duplicate Windows 7 entry
if [ "${DEVICE}" = "/dev/sdb2" ]; then
continue
fi
These lines remove "(loader)", as well as the duplicate entry.
Obviously, /dev/sdb1 won't be the correct device for all users, but I'm
thinking that if the GRUB menu noted which partition each Windows entry
went to, and kept a log in the Linux partition of which was last used, then
the user could be shown which one he/she used last, and choose which one to
remove, based on that.
Since this fix is well beyond the ability of a casual user (and required
me--who knows a fair bit of BASH--some time and Googling to figure
out--especially since it's not obvious where to put this stuff), it would
be really nice to make these lines into "check box" options after showing
the user a preview of the menu. Since the user likely won't know which
entry is the correct one until he/she tries to boot it, it would be best to
show this after a reboot (when the installation is done), and allow the
user to choose "show this dialog at next boot," or "don't show this dialog
at next boot"--with the option to access the menu elsewhere if he/she
chooses the latter. This way, the user can deal with the problem as
he/she's ready to do so, without (1) being unable to find where to fix this
after the first boot; and (2) being annoyed that the dialog pops up at
every boot, after the user has decided to do nothing at all about it.
I'm no programmer, and have never written a blueprint or similar before
(and am wary about being told-off for doing it badly), so if anybody feels
up to formatting this in a pleasing way and posting it wherever such is
appropriate, I would be very grateful. :-) I think that this (if
implemented) would remove some of the ire I've noticed on the 'net about
the difficult-to-configure nature of GRUB2--at least where Windows Vista/7
entries are concerned. (Please note that it's not my intention to bash on
GRUB2; I just notice that some things are pretty confusing to those of us
who don't know its intricacies.)
Anyway, I hope this email proves useful to somebody. Have a nice day.
--Dane
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Re: Ugly GRUB menu entries
Denis Washington writes:
> - The Ubuntu entries as the kernel version ("Ubuntu, with kernel
> 3.2.0-9...") that do not relate to anything that we usually present
> the user. It would be much nicer if we had the actual Ubuntu version
> stand there instead, so that the entry just becomes "Ubuntu 12.04".
Adding the Ubuntu version would be a big help. I recently upgraded
a Natty desktop to Oneiric by cloning the Natty partition, then
upgrading one of the clones. The Natty had been a fresh install,
and there were no other OS partitions on the system.
After the install, my grub screen had 22 lines (!), with labels like
Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-12-generic
There was no way to tell which entries were for Natty, which were
for Oneiric, and which were an unbootable mixture of Natty partition
with Oneiric kernel (but no Oneiric modules) or vice versa.
After poking at it for a while, I gave up and switched to extlinux
so I'd have some control over the boot menu. If the entries had
offered some clue about Ubuntu version (or even root partition),
I might have stuck with grub2.
You can't just omit the kernel entirely: grub generates lines for
all kernels available in /boot, so you'd end up with 11 lines of
"Ubuntu 11.10" and no way to tell them apart. But the "last known
good kernel" idea is a good one; you could also have "newest installed
kernel", since update-grub is typically run after installing a new
kernel but before rebooting. So you could use readable strings for
those two cases, and only show the kernel names for other cases.
...Akkana
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Re: Ugly GRUB menu entries
Am 18.01.2012 12:43, schrieb Colin Watson: On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 08:32:35AM +, Paul Sladen wrote: I think it's an excellent idea to streamline the Grub menu. Could you perhaps try to mock up before/after "screenshots", so that it's clear each change that you'd like to make? As the Ubuntu GRUB maintainer I'd prefer text. Since we aren't going to be making large changes to the visual layout at least in this cycle, text should be quite sufficient, and much less work for bug reporters too. I didn't want to imply any visual changes, this is just about the text. I think there are bugs about most of this already. The main source of tedium is that we don't have reliable data for all of this. Finding the Windows boot loader at all in a consistent way is more of a pain than you might think, and even with Ubuntu you have the question of how to deal with kernels that originated with old Ubuntu releases but that are associated with more recent userspace. As to Windows, the only problem I actually have is the appended and (seemingly) meaningless "(loader)" in the description, which (I guess?) is easy to remove. I understand that it is probably not possible to relate kernel to Ubuntu versions, but if all kernel releases with the same userspace would have the corresponding Ubuntu version number, that would be more than enough. Also, it would be nice if the kernel version would only be shown if there are really multiple kernels to boot, e.g.: Ubuntu 12.04 (kernel 3.0.2-9-generic) Ubuntu 12.04 (kernel 3.0.2-8-generic) when there are two kernels installed, but only Ubuntu 12.04 if there is just one. Even nicer would be if there only were entries for the newest and the "last known good" kernel, like this: Ubuntu 12.04 Ubuntu 12.04 (last known good) but this probably needs quite a lot more changes (probably not limited to GRUB itself). If you're not sure where to file these; you're welcome to file them against "Ubuntu branding" for the moment: http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-branding/+filebug?field.title=Grub:+streamline+boot+entries No need for a layer of indirection; the correct package is grub2 in Ubuntu. I filed a bug against "grub" (now moved to "grub2") today with some more details: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/918041 Regards, Denis -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ugly GRUB menu entries
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 08:32:35AM +, Paul Sladen wrote: > I think it's an excellent idea to streamline the Grub menu. Could you > perhaps try to mock up before/after "screenshots", so that it's clear > each change that you'd like to make? As the Ubuntu GRUB maintainer I'd prefer text. Since we aren't going to be making large changes to the visual layout at least in this cycle, text should be quite sufficient, and much less work for bug reporters too. I think there are bugs about most of this already. The main source of tedium is that we don't have reliable data for all of this. Finding the Windows boot loader at all in a consistent way is more of a pain than you might think, and even with Ubuntu you have the question of how to deal with kernels that originated with old Ubuntu releases but that are associated with more recent userspace. > If you're not sure where to file these; you're welcome to file them > against "Ubuntu branding" for the moment: > > > http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-branding/+filebug?field.title=Grub:+streamline+boot+entries No need for a layer of indirection; the correct package is grub2 in Ubuntu. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ugly GRUB menu entries
On Wed, 18 Jan 2012, Denis Washington wrote: Greetings Dennis, > Given that this Ubuntu cycle is all about "precision" with little > Who do you think? (Is that something to file a bug about?) I think it's an excellent idea to streamline the Grub menu. Could you perhaps try to mock up before/after "screenshots", so that it's clear each change that you'd like to make? If you're not sure where to file these; you're welcome to file them against "Ubuntu branding" for the moment: http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-branding/+filebug?field.title=Grub:+streamline+boot+entries and we can point the bug to the appropriate place once the problem-space is understood and a design solution distilled! -Paul -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Ugly GRUB menu entries
Hello,
Given that this Ubuntu cycle is all about "precision" with little
details, how about taking some "techie" cruft out of the GRUB boot
selection menu entries? Currently, these seem pretty confusing to a
casual user:
- The Ubuntu entries as the kernel version ("Ubuntu, with kernel
3.2.0-9...") that do not relate to anything that we usually present the
user. It would be much nicer if we had the actual Ubuntu version stand
there instead, so that the entry just becomes "Ubuntu 12.04".
- The Windows entries for Windows Vista or Windows 7 always seems to get
"(loader)" appended to their name, apparently because they boot from a
separate boot partition. This is completely useless to the user and not
particularly pretty. The entry should just be named e.g. "Windows 7".
What do you think? (Is that something to file a bug about?)
Regards,
Denis Washington
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