Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
Jon Dowland jmtd at debian.org writes: On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 03:42:57PM +0200, Aioanei Rares wrote: A more practical approach : what should the average user do in order to get his/her Debian back after this GRUB bug? Stick to stable in future, that's what. This happened to me with someone's machine. I don't quite recall how I did it, but I booted into the command line, then did apt-get remove grub, apt-get install lilo, and everything was just find afterwards. Lilo is a bit ugly, but it works fine. Now, how did I manage to get to the command line? There is a live CD available, grub restore or something similar. Think this was it. It was not able to restore grub to functioning but one of the options in there someplace is to boot an existing system. I think that was what got me to the command line on the system that grub had blown up on. Once you can boot from it, you can fix it by taking out grub and putting in lilo. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
A more practical approach : what should the average user do in order to get his/her Debian back after this GRUB bug? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 03:42:57PM +0200, Aioanei Rares wrote: A more practical approach : what should the average user do in order to get his/her Debian back after this GRUB bug? One option would be to boot from a CD (installer, liveCD, whatever), chroot into Debian and revert grub to an earlier version. Cheers, Tom -- Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. -George Bernard Shaw signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 07:24:58AM -0800, Brian Denheyer wrote: Is there any good reason for a system to use grub instead of lilo ? Yes. Lilo loads kernel by its sector address on harddisk. So if you update its image while with the same file name, you need to update pointer data for lilo. Grub cab understand ext2 FS and identify and load updated kernel without extra work. Grub appears to me to be a annoying, complicated, and hard to understand, and those are it's good points :-( I understand... Grub using confusing artitin name (grub and grub2 use different naming convention) is more than annoying to me. But lefe goes on wile we get used to it. I never had a problem with LILO, but for some reason Deb decided to make grub the default. I do not know Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 03:42:57PM +0200, Aioanei Rares wrote: A more practical approach : what should the average user do in order to get his/her Debian back after this GRUB bug? Stick to stable in future, that's what. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:18:30 -0500 (EST), Tom Furie wrote: One option would be to boot from a CD (installer, liveCD, whatever), chroot into Debian and revert grub to an earlier version. As has been addressed in other recent posts, downgrading a package to a previous version once a newer version has been installed is unsupported and often difficult. If there is a different package that performs the same function, it is usually easier to deinstall the problem package and install the alternative package in its place. Laying my personal biases aside and considering the problem as objectively as I can, I would recommend installing an alternate bootloader, if possible, rather than attempting to downgrade the existing bootloader. But each user must decide for himself what works best in his situation. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:47:17AM -0500, Stephen Powell wrote: On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:18:30 -0500 (EST), Tom Furie wrote: One option would be to boot from a CD (installer, liveCD, whatever), chroot into Debian and revert grub to an earlier version. As has been addressed in other recent posts, downgrading a package to a previous version once a newer version has been installed is unsupported and often difficult. If there is a different package that performs the same function, it is usually easier to deinstall the problem package and install the alternative package in its place. Laying my personal biases aside and considering the problem as objectively as I can, I would recommend installing an alternate bootloader, if possible, rather than attempting to downgrade the existing bootloader. But each user must decide for himself what works best in his situation. In general I agree with you, but in this case it should be fairly trivial since very little depends on grub, and the dependencies between the versions haven't changed, to purge the current version and install an earlier one. I know, for example that 1.98~20100126-1 still works. Cheers, Tom signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tuesday 02 February 2010 11:59:31 Tom Furie wrote: On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:47:17AM -0500, Stephen Powell wrote: On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:18:30 -0500 (EST), Tom Furie wrote: One option would be to boot from a CD (installer, liveCD, whatever), chroot into Debian and revert grub to an earlier version. As has been addressed in other recent posts, downgrading a package to a previous version once a newer version has been installed is unsupported and often difficult. In general I agree with you, but in this case it should be fairly trivial since very little depends on grub, and the dependencies between the versions haven't changed, to purge the current version and install an earlier one. I know, for example that 1.98~20100126-1 still works. Usually a purge followed by a re-install will work as a substitute of a direct downgrade. Some packages (e.g. DMBSes) may leave traces behind even after a purge, so this route is not a guaranteed success. Of course, if anything depends on the package you are trying to downgrade, just preforming the purge can become tricky. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. b...@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/\_/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 12:59:31 -0500 (EST), Tom Furie wrote: On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:47:17AM -0500, Stephen Powell wrote: On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:18:30 -0500 (EST), Tom Furie wrote: One option would be to boot from a CD (installer, liveCD, whatever), chroot into Debian and revert grub to an earlier version. As has been addressed in other recent posts, downgrading a package to a previous version once a newer version has been installed is unsupported and often difficult. If there is a different package that performs the same function, it is usually easier to deinstall the problem package and install the alternative package in its place. Laying my personal biases aside and considering the problem as objectively as I can, I would recommend installing an alternate bootloader, if possible, rather than attempting to downgrade the existing bootloader. But each user must decide for himself what works best in his situation. In general I agree with you, but in this case it should be fairly trivial since very little depends on grub, and the dependencies between the versions haven't changed, to purge the current version and install an earlier one. I know, for example that 1.98~20100126-1 still works. If you can *find* it, yes. For example, if you are running sid, and a new upload breaks, you may be able to find an older version in testing that still works. But if you are running testing and an upload breaks, where are you going to find a down-level version that you can install? The version in stable was probably compiled with a back-level C compiler and may require a back-level C run-time library, etc. If you have backups of your /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory, you may be able to find a .deb package file for a downlevel release. But in my case I run aptitude clean after each upgrade to free disk space. If I were running grup-pc and testing, and a migration of a grub-pc package from sid to testing caused my system to be unbootable, I don't know where I would even be able to *find* a downlevel .deb package to install from, especially if it had been more than a few days between the migration from sid to testing and when I ran my upgrade. By then, all the mirrors would have updated. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tuesday 02 February 2010 13:09:42 Stephen Powell wrote: On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 12:59:31 -0500 (EST), Tom Furie wrote: In general I agree with you, but in this case it should be fairly trivial since very little depends on grub, and the dependencies between the versions haven't changed, to purge the current version and install an earlier one. I know, for example that 1.98~20100126-1 still works. If you can *find* it, yes. [...] By then, all the mirrors would have updated. Yet another good reason snapshot.debian.net should be brought back to life. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. b...@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/\_/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
If you can *find* it, yes. For example, if you are running sid, and a new upload breaks, you may be able to find an older version in testing that still works. But if you are running testing and an upload breaks, where are you going to find a down-level version that you can install? The version in stable was probably compiled with a back-level C compiler and may require a back-level C run-time library, etc. If you have backups of your /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory, you may be able to find a .deb package file for a downlevel release. But in my case I run aptitude clean after each upgrade to free disk space. If I were running grup-pc and testing, and a migration of a grub-pc package from sid to testing caused my system to be unbootable, I don't know where I would even be able to *find* a downlevel .deb package to install from, especially so if it had been more than a few days between the migration from sid to testing and when I ran my upgrade. By then, all the mirrors would have updated. +1 In this case, I would back up sources.list, create a new, one-line sources.list pointing at the main section of testing, purge unstable's grub-common and grub-pc, apt-get update, install testing's grub-common and grub-pc, delete the temporary sources.list, reinstate the original sources.list, and apt-get update (and possibly pin grub-common and grub-pc until the next version so that are not upgraded at the next apt-get upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade). BTW, these are the 386 versions in the repositories: grub-common_1.98~20100115-1_i386.deb15-Jan-2010 20:04 1.4M grub-common_1.98~20100128-1_i386.deb28-Jan-2010 18:06 1.4M grub-pc_1.98~20100115-1_i386.deb15-Jan-2010 20:04 809K grub-pc_1.98~20100128-1_i386.deb28-Jan-2010 18:06 820K -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 14:56:06 -0500 (EST), Tom H wrote: In this case, I would back up sources.list, create a new, one-line sources.list pointing at the main section of testing, purge unstable's grub-common and grub-pc, apt-get update, install testing's grub-common and grub-pc, delete the temporary sources.list, reinstate the original sources.list, and apt-get update (and possibly pin grub-common and grub-pc until the next version so that are not upgraded at the next apt-get upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade). BTW, these are the 386 versions in the repositories: grub-common_1.98~20100115-1_i386.deb 15-Jan-2010 20:04 1.4M grub-common_1.98~20100128-1_i386.deb 28-Jan-2010 18:06 1.4M grub-pc_1.98~20100115-1_i386.deb 15-Jan-2010 20:04 809K grub-pc_1.98~20100128-1_i386.deb 28-Jan-2010 18:06 820K That sounds like a procedure for getting a down-level version of a package from testing if you are running sid and the sid version is broken. But that's not the scenario I'm talking about. In my scenario, I'm running pure testing. If a broken package gets uploaded to sid, I'll never know. I won't know until it migrates to testing. And once it enters testing, and I upgrade my system, and it's broken, and I want to go back to the version I was running before, then what? I've got nowhere to retrieve the old package from. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 02:09:42PM -0500, Stephen Powell wrote: If you can *find* it, yes. For example, if you are running sid, and a new upload breaks, you may be able to find an older version in testing that still works. But if you are running testing and an upload breaks, where are you going to find a down-level version that you can install? The version in stable was probably compiled with a back-level C compiler and may require a back-level C run-time library, etc. If you have backups of your /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory, you may be able to find a .deb package file for a downlevel release. But in my case I run aptitude clean after each upgrade to free disk space. If I were running grup-pc and testing, and a migration of a grub-pc package from sid to testing caused my system to be unbootable, I don't know where I would even be able to *find* a downlevel .deb package to install from, especially if it had been more than a few days between the migration from sid to testing and when I ran my upgrade. By then, all the mirrors would have updated. All the more reason to install apt-listbugs on any testing or sid system. There's also the fact that breakage like this *should* prevent the package from migrating to testing in the first place. As far as I know the version of grub2 in testing is still 1.98~20100115-1 which works fine. Cheers, Tom -- QOTD: Who? Me? No, no, NO!! But I do sell rugs. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
In this case, I would back up sources.list, create a new, one-line sources.list pointing at the main section of testing, purge unstable's grub-common and grub-pc, apt-get update, install testing's grub-common and grub-pc, delete the temporary sources.list, reinstate the original sources.list, and apt-get update (and possibly pin grub-common and grub-pc until the next version so that are not upgraded at the next apt-get upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade). BTW, these are the 386 versions in the repositories: grub-common_1.98~20100115-1_i386.deb 15-Jan-2010 20:04 1.4M grub-common_1.98~20100128-1_i386.deb 28-Jan-2010 18:06 1.4M grub-pc_1.98~20100115-1_i386.deb 15-Jan-2010 20:04 809K grub-pc_1.98~20100128-1_i386.deb 28-Jan-2010 18:06 820K That sounds like a procedure for getting a down-level version of a package from testing if you are running sid and the sid version is broken. But that's not the scenario I'm talking about. In my scenario, I'm running pure testing. If a broken package gets uploaded to sid, I'll never know. I won't know until it migrates to testing. And once it enters testing, and I upgrade my system, and it's broken, and I want to go back to the version I was running before, then what? I've got nowhere to retrieve the old package from. That's why I said +1 to your previous email and said in this case because it is possible to do so for grub given its dependencies. Unstable and testing currently have just one version of grub2 each so if someone wants to downgrade unstable's grub2, he/she has to use the testing version. If /boot is not lvm'd or mdadm'd or both, the OP can install lilo (which I assume cannot handle such a setup) or grub1. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 16:11:09 -0500 (EST), Tom H wrote: That's why I said +1 to your previous email and said in this case because it is possible to do so for grub given its dependencies. Unstable and testing currently have just one version of grub2 each so if someone wants to downgrade unstable's grub2, he/she has to use the testing version. OK, maybe I misunderstood. For some reason, I thought the OP was running pure testing and a broken package migrated from sid to testing, causing his boot loader to break. Apparently he was running sid, and I somehow missed that detail. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
OK, maybe I misunderstood. For some reason, I thought the OP was running pure testing and a broken package migrated from sid to testing, causing his boot loader to break. Apparently he was running sid, and I somehow missed that detail. No probs. Anyway your point about finding more than one version of grub2 in unstable or testing is definitely still valid. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
Imagine by surprise when I finished upgrading unstable and ended up with a system that wouldn't boot. And I'm not the only one, judging from the bug list. So notice to those running unstable, DON'T UPGRADE GRUB ! So you're probably wondering what my question is :-) Is there any good reason for a system to use grub instead of lilo ? Grub appears to me to be a annoying, complicated, and hard to understand, and those are it's good points :-( I never had a problem with LILO, but for some reason Deb decided to make grub the default. Brian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Monday 01 February 2010 16:24:58 Brian Denheyer wrote: Imagine by surprise when I finished upgrading unstable and ended up with a system that wouldn't boot. And I'm not the only one, judging from the bug list. So notice to those running unstable, DON'T UPGRADE GRUB ! So you're probably wondering what my question is :-) Is there any good reason for a system to use grub instead of lilo ? Grub appears to me to be a annoying, complicated, and hard to understand, and those are it's good points :-( I never had a problem with LILO, but for some reason Deb decided to make grub the default. Brian Not all GRUB functions are supported in LILO (I would mostly miss the the network boot). Debian isn't linux only , kfreebsd and gnu-hurd don't work with LiLo (... and even some Linux ports would have problems with it as well). Debian needs a default and grub is more suitable in most cases. Nothing will stop you from using LiLo if that's what you prefer. Jens. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Monday 01 February 2010 16:24:58 Brian Denheyer wrote: Imagine by surprise when I finished upgrading unstable and ended up with a system that wouldn't boot. And I'm not the only one, judging from the bug list. So notice to those running unstable, DON'T UPGRADE GRUB ! So you're probably wondering what my question is :-) Is there any good reason for a system to use grub instead of lilo ? Grub appears to me to be a annoying, complicated, and hard to understand, and those are it's good points :-( I never had a problem with LILO, but for some reason Deb decided to make grub the default. Brian I am using sid too, but I installed apt-listbugs, which told me not to upgrade grub-pc. So I was saved from it. Generaly I think it is a good idea to have apt-listbugs. Thierry -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Monday 01 February 2010 10:06:50 Jens Van Broeckhoven wrote: Debian needs a default and grub is more suitable in most cases. It's only the default if you are using d-i. Oft times, I will install Debian through the debootstrap method, from whatever live CD/DVD I have sitting around. In that case, you don't get a bootloader until you install one (of your choice). Nothing will stop you from using LiLo if that's what you prefer. Also, once GRUB is purged from your system, I don't know any debian package that will attempt to pull it back in. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. b...@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/\_/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: don't upgrade grub or grub-pc ! what's wrong with LILO ?
On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:24:58 -0500 (EST), Brian Denheyer wrote: Imagine by surprise when I finished upgrading unstable and ended up with a system that wouldn't boot. And I'm not the only one, judging from the bug list. So notice to those running unstable, DON'T UPGRADE GRUB ! So you're probably wondering what my question is :-) Is there any good reason for a system to use grub instead of lilo ? Grub appears to me to be a annoying, complicated, and hard to understand, and those are it's good points :-( I never had a problem with LILO, but for some reason Deb decided to make grub the default. GRUB stands for GRand Unified Bootloader. As I understand it, the idea was to create a single bootloader that could be used on a number of different hardware platforms, rather than for each hardware platform to have its own unique bootloader. There were other design goals for grub too, but that was the main one. But as chief engineer Montgomery Scott (better known as Scotty) says in the movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, The more they over-tink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. And it looks like the drain just got stopped up. The goals of grub are laudable. But the boot process is a very hardware specific thing, and trying to create a one size fits all boot loader that works on all platforms is a daunting task. Neither grub nor grub2 works on the s390 platform, for example. It uses a program called zipl as its boot loader. If lilo works for you, and you're happy with it, then stick with it. That's my advice, for what it's worth. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
