Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:49:52 -0600, Dale wrote: What can change? We are stuck with a hardware spec from 30 years ago for booting. That won't change any time soon. File systems for one. They do make new ones every once in a while. ' That's the one area ion which GRUB may need an update. Fortunately, it's filesystem handling is modular. That's completely different. HAL had to deal with varying hardware and varying requirement of the software that wanted to interface with that hardware. OK. Hal has to deal with different hardware. Doesn't grub work on different hardware too? No. Hard disks are hard disks, BIOSes are BIOSes. If that changed, the World would fall apart. That's why you can get a kernel panic if you forgot to build your SATA controller's drivers into the kernel, but GRUB quite happily loaded the same kernel from the same disk. Unlike the operating system, it doesn't really care about the details of the hardware. All computers are not the same. We also don't know what will be out in a few years either. We do, and it will be compatible with what we have now. I don't want to use grub2. As I said, I'll switch when I know it is safe to do so or when the old grub stops working, whichever comes first. Grub does have to work with the BIOS but there is more to it than that. It has to work with the file systems too. Yes, and that's it. When you want to boot from a BTRFS or ZFS filesystem, GRUB will need patching, but that's about it. Remember, GRUB is a very simple, one task tool, like a hammer. Unless someone invents helical nails, it will continue to do its job forever[1]. [1] for reasonable values of forever. -- Neil Bothwick Love is grand. Divorce is a few grand more. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On 2011-01-13 10:41, Neil Bothwick wrote: No. Hard disks are hard disks, BIOSes are BIOSes. If that changed, the World would fall apart. That's why you can get a kernel panic if you forgot to build your SATA controller's drivers into the kernel, but GRUB quite happily loaded the same kernel from the same disk. Unlike the operating system, it doesn't really care about the details of the hardware. If I remember correctly, grub (legacy) is not compatible with EFI or GPT... Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:00:45 +0100, pk wrote: If I remember correctly, grub (legacy) is not compatible with EFI or GPT... That's right, so GRUB's current lifespan will end when we use those methods exclusively. This won't happen soon. I'd be more than happy for GRUB1 to become obsolete if it means we get away from the current booting methods, but I'm not holding my breath. -- Neil Bothwick Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. - Mark Twain signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On 13 January 2011 13:12, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:00:45 +0100, pk wrote: If I remember correctly, grub (legacy) is not compatible with EFI or GPT... That's right, so GRUB's current lifespan will end when we use those methods exclusively. This won't happen soon. I'd be more than happy for GRUB1 to become obsolete if it means we get away from the current booting methods, but I'm not holding my breath. Coming in a bit late into this ... The dictionary is trying to use synonyms, which may only partially overlap in meaning. This is to be expected in a same-language dictionary, if tautologies are to be avoided (i.e. rain = when it rains, ha!) Finished is a term and would most likely refer to the duration of an activity, or a temporal attribute of it; e.g. this thang is finished! (meaning end-of-life, life-expired). Complete on the other hand does not necessarily refer to a time related attribute, but more likely to a qualitative attribute, i.e. complete relevant to specification, requirements, expectations, shape, etc. There is some interchangeability in the two (e.g. I have completed this task, or the finishing of the whiskey) but if you lift the bonnet (aheam! hood) to look at the engine then the time/quality differentiator is there. PS. Sorry, no citations ... :-p -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On 2011-01-13 14:12, Neil Bothwick wrote: That's right, so GRUB's current lifespan will end when we use those methods exclusively. This won't happen soon. Intel is pushing (U)EFI... http://www.taranfx.com/bios-death-uefi http://www.hardcoreware.net/msi-using-uefi-sandy-bridge/ Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 7:00 AM, pk pete...@coolmail.se wrote: On 2011-01-13 10:41, Neil Bothwick wrote: No. Hard disks are hard disks, BIOSes are BIOSes. If that changed, the World would fall apart. That's why you can get a kernel panic if you forgot to build your SATA controller's drivers into the kernel, but GRUB quite happily loaded the same kernel from the same disk. Unlike the operating system, it doesn't really care about the details of the hardware. If I remember correctly, grub (legacy) is not compatible with EFI or GPT... I'm using grub-legacy with GPT, but I think Gentoo's version includes some patches. I have no idea if they are in use upstream. I guess if they were, they wouldn't be patches. :)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On 11/1/2011, at 10:08pm, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:51:33 -0600, Dale wrote: Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. What is there to do with it? It's a bootloader that boots and loads, what more do you want? No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. Boot to BTFS filesystems? Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:33:02 +, Stroller wrote: No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. Boot to BTFS filesystems? Finished != complete -- Neil Bothwick Bug: (n.) any program feature not yet described to the marketing department. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Neil Bothwick wrote: On Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:46:43 -0600, Dale wrote: What is there to do with it? It's a bootloader that boots and loads, what more do you want? No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. My point was, if something changes and it no longer works, then we may all have to switch. According to the website, nothing much is being done with the old grub. What can change? We are stuck with a hardware spec from 30 years ago for booting. That won't change any time soon. File systems for one. They do make new ones every once in a while. ' I want to wait until either the old grub doesn't work for me or the new grub is known to be stable and has got all the kinks worked out. Even then, I may wait until I have a issue or the old grub leaves the tree. I seem to recall hal was stable and worked for most people too. It just didn't work here for me. That's completely different. HAL had to deal with varying hardware and varying requirement of the software that wanted to interface with that hardware. OK. Hal has to deal with different hardware. Doesn't grub work on different hardware too? All computers are not the same. We also don't know what will be out in a few years either. When is the last time a package was finished never to be changed again? I have never seen that from any program. There is always something new, some better way to do things or just some little tweak to improve things. Maybe there are, and if that's what you want you can use GRUB2, but legacy GRUB won't stop working as long as we are using the BIOS to boot from disk-like devices. I don't want to use grub2. As I said, I'll switch when I know it is safe to do so or when the old grub stops working, whichever comes first. Grub does have to work with the BIOS but there is more to it than that. It has to work with the file systems too. There could be other things that pop up and need fixing too. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:51:33 -0600, Dale wrote: Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. What is there to do with it? It's a bootloader that boots and loads, what more do you want? No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. -- Neil Bothwick Deja Moo: The feeling that you heard this bull somewhere before. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:51:33 -0600, Dale wrote: Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. What is there to do with it? It's a bootloader that boots and loads, what more do you want? No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. My point was, if something changes and it no longer works, then we may all have to switch. According to the website, nothing much is being done with the old grub. I want to wait until either the old grub doesn't work for me or the new grub is known to be stable and has got all the kinks worked out. Even then, I may wait until I have a issue or the old grub leaves the tree. I seem to recall hal was stable and worked for most people too. It just didn't work here for me. When is the last time a package was finished never to be changed again? I have never seen that from any program. There is always something new, some better way to do things or just some little tweak to improve things. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Apparently, though unproven, at 00:46 on Wednesday 12 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:51:33 -0600, Dale wrote: Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. What is there to do with it? It's a bootloader that boots and loads, what more do you want? No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. My point was, if something changes and it no longer works, then we may all have to switch. According to the website, nothing much is being done with the old grub. I want to wait until either the old grub doesn't work for me or the new grub is known to be stable and has got all the kinks worked out. Even then, I may wait until I have a issue or the old grub leaves the tree. I seem to recall hal was stable and worked for most people too. It just didn't work here for me. When is the last time a package was finished never to be changed again? I have never seen that from any program. There is always something new, some better way to do things or just some little tweak to improve things. grub is actually a good candidate for that. It's a boot loader, it loads a kernel, sets the instruction pointer and tells the cpu to let rip. What new features could it get? Legacy grub boots right now. It boots off most file systems that most people use and it uses the bios to get going. The point where we are all forced to switch is one of two: In many many many years time when no-one uses any of the file systems grub knows about, or in many many many years time when BIOS is nothing but a bad memory. That will all happen. In many many many years from now. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP I want to wait until either the old grub doesn't work for me or the new grub is known to be stable and has got all the kinks worked out. Even then, I may wait until I have a issue or the old grub leaves the tree. I seem to recall hal was stable and worked for most people too. It just didn't work here for me. Meaning you want grub-legacy to remain in the portage tree until you no longer need it and not when some dev decides he no longer wants to support it. So do I. Of course, we have the option of personal overlays. Get the ebuild for grub as well as a copy of the code, build your own overlay, modify the ebuild, test it, maintain it, and write it to a CD somewhere. When you install a new machine load it on in the build process and you're in good shape, right? If I was really on top of this stuff I'd run my own rsync server and keep it there for the dozen or so Gentoo machines VMs lurking around my house these days. I'm just not on top of it. ;-) - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:46:43 -0600, Dale wrote: What is there to do with it? It's a bootloader that boots and loads, what more do you want? No longer updated can mean broken, but it can also mean finished. My point was, if something changes and it no longer works, then we may all have to switch. According to the website, nothing much is being done with the old grub. What can change? We are stuck with a hardware spec from 30 years ago for booting. That won't change any time soon. I want to wait until either the old grub doesn't work for me or the new grub is known to be stable and has got all the kinks worked out. Even then, I may wait until I have a issue or the old grub leaves the tree. I seem to recall hal was stable and worked for most people too. It just didn't work here for me. That's completely different. HAL had to deal with varying hardware and varying requirement of the software that wanted to interface with that hardware. When is the last time a package was finished never to be changed again? I have never seen that from any program. There is always something new, some better way to do things or just some little tweak to improve things. Maybe there are, and if that's what you want you can use GRUB2, but legacy GRUB won't stop working as long as we are using the BIOS to boot from disk-like devices. -- Neil Bothwick Zmodem has bigger bits, softer blocks, and tighter ASCII signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Apparently, though unproven, at 01:36 on Sunday 09 January 2011, walt did opine thusly: About three years ago I spent a lot of time on the grub2 mailing list, building grub2 from their svn repo, even submitting a patch or two to get it working for the *BSD family. Then I got old and tired and I settled on gentoo. I deleted all the other OS's from my machines, including (especially) Windows -- so I no longer need to multiboot five different OS's -- and so I lost interest in the sexy new features of grub2. Lately, though, I've been using multiple USB sticks, and having them plugged in at boot-time can confuse legacy grub into booting from the wrong disk, i.e. not booting at all. Very annoying. So, I installed grub-1.98 and I've found that it *does* find partitions by UUID, and even by LABEL, amongst multiple disks. Very nifty. Not so fast, though. I don't know how to write a grub.conf file that can tell grub2 how to do that automatically so I don't need to type commands at the interactive grub2 command prompt. That's where you testosterone-pumped youngsters (Dale? Volker? Alan? Neil? Anyone?) can help fix this basically silly problem. Might be worth learning how this new-fangled boot loader works. Right now I'm having Hercules' own fight trying to get Android Donut[1] and Froyo triple-booting on an Ubuntu 10.10 netbook. Ubuntu uses grub2 these days and I think I want to keep that (makes updates easier that way - the Android stuff is a manual update anyway). Let's keep the thread open and add stuff as we find it. [1] Yes, Android now runs on x86 :-) http://www.android-x86.org [2] I'llet testosterone-pumped passed (I'm the BOFH at work) but I dunno about youngsters, this here fellow has grey in his beard. Actually he has a grey beard with a few bits of brown in it :-) grub2 is enough different from legacy grub to make the learning curve very steep -- but I'm only about half-way up the curve and I'm fading fast. (I usually unplug the offending USB stick and reboot :) If anyone here is interested enough to spend some real time and effort on grub2, I can offer a few pointers, but I'm not willing to do the real grunt work myself. Hm, sunset. Off to bed :) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Apparently, though unproven, at 02:44 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: I have not tried grub2 yet but I did fine these: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2 That has a lot of info on the grub2 conf file. It is called grub.cfg if I read that correctly. There is a lot of info there. Seems a bit complicated since I don't have it installed and can really follow what they mean on things. This next one is a bit more basic tho: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Grub2 This one seems to have a example and not quite so complicated. http://grub.enbug.org/grub.cfg I don't quite agree with Volker's viewpoint but don't totally disagree with him either. grub2 has a whole whack of bloat all of it's own. Here's what Ubuntu has on 10.10: $ ls -al /boot/ total 17656 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-01-08 21:37 . drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 2011-01-08 21:21 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 705861 2010-12-02 09:07 abi-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 128614 2010-12-02 09:07 config-2.6.35-24-generic drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-01-08 21:21 grub -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10752449 2010-12-28 20:57 initrd.img-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 165084 2010-09-24 19:14 memtest86+.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 167264 2010-09-24 19:14 memtest86+_multiboot.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1831358 2010-12-02 09:07 System.map-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1192 2010-12-02 09:10 vmcoreinfo-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4294032 2010-12-02 09:07 vmlinuz-2.6.35-24-generic $ du -sh /boot/ 22M /boot/ Most of that is an 11M initrd and a 4.1M kernel. What?? A fully modular kernel weighing in it 4.1M?? grub2 modules are 4.1M, not too bad, except by looking at filenames there iss support in there for jpeg, intel 915, xfs, andrewfs, hfsplus, iso9660, jfs and $DEITY knows what else. Including tar. Methinks a modular build system is in order here. Why should I build support for sparc when I know for a fact I'm building an x86 installer? -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Alan McKinnon wrote: I don't quite agree with Volker's viewpoint but don't totally disagree with him either. grub2 has a whole whack of bloat all of it's own. Here's what Ubuntu has on 10.10: $ ls -al /boot/ total 17656 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-01-08 21:37 . drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 2011-01-08 21:21 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 705861 2010-12-02 09:07 abi-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 128614 2010-12-02 09:07 config-2.6.35-24-generic drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-01-08 21:21 grub -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10752449 2010-12-28 20:57 initrd.img-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 165084 2010-09-24 19:14 memtest86+.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 167264 2010-09-24 19:14 memtest86+_multiboot.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1831358 2010-12-02 09:07 System.map-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1192 2010-12-02 09:10 vmcoreinfo-2.6.35-24-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4294032 2010-12-02 09:07 vmlinuz-2.6.35-24-generic $ du -sh /boot/ 22M /boot/ Most of that is an 11M initrd and a 4.1M kernel. What?? A fully modular kernel weighing in it 4.1M?? grub2 modules are 4.1M, not too bad, except by looking at filenames there iss support in there for jpeg, intel 915, xfs, andrewfs, hfsplus, iso9660, jfs and $DEITY knows what else. Including tar. Methinks a modular build system is in order here. Why should I build support for sparc when I know for a fact I'm building an x86 installer? It seems grub2 is a whopper. Check this out: r...@fireball / # du -shc /boot/ 13M /boot/ 13M total r...@fireball / # ls -al /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4201472 Dec 15 00:16 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4204768 Dec 19 23:11 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4207168 Jan 4 23:38 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r6-1 r...@fireball / # So, my /boot is 13Mbs and I have three kernels there plus copies of their config files as well. Those are full blown ones since I don't use modules. I guess grub2 may make some people have to grow their /boot partition a bit for all that. I'm not planning to try grub2 for a bit yet but from the looks of it, it's a good thing I made my /boot partition 200Mbs. o_O Why so much you reckon? I did a emerge -pv and it has to install three more packages, in addition to the ones grub-static pulled in already. Does grub2 wash dishes too? I need one of those if it does. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Apparently, though unproven, at 19:48 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: It seems grub2 is a whopper. Check this out: r...@fireball / # du -shc boot 13M boot 13M total r...@fireball / # ls -al /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4201472 Dec 15 00:16 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4204768 Dec 19 23:11 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4207168 Jan 4 23:38 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r6-1 r...@fireball / # So, my /boot is 13Mbs and I have three kernels there plus copies of their config files as well. Those are full blown ones since I don't use modules. I guess grub2 may make some people have to grow their /boot partition a bit for all that. I'm not planning to try grub2 for a bit yet but from the looks of it, it's a good thing I made my /boot partition 200Mbs. o_O Why so much you reckon? I did a emerge -pv and it has to install three more packages, in addition to the ones grub-static pulled in already. Does grub2 wash dishes too? I need one of those if it does. lol It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has a truetype USE flag. Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- screen -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Sunday 09 January 2011 22:04:44 Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 19:48 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: It seems grub2 is a whopper. Check this out: r...@fireball / # du -shc boot 13M boot 13M total r...@fireball / # ls -al /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4201472 Dec 15 00:16 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4204768 Dec 19 23:11 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4207168 Jan 4 23:38 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r6-1 r...@fireball / # So, my /boot is 13Mbs and I have three kernels there plus copies of their config files as well. Those are full blown ones since I don't use modules. I guess grub2 may make some people have to grow their /boot partition a bit for all that. I'm not planning to try grub2 for a bit yet but from the looks of it, it's a good thing I made my /boot partition 200Mbs. o_O Why so much you reckon? I did a emerge -pv and it has to install three more packages, in addition to the ones grub-static pulled in already. Does grub2 wash dishes too? I need one of those if it does. lol It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has a truetype USE flag. Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- screen and of course it uses a way to load the OS everybody else says is broken. GNU ftw!
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Alan McKinnon wrote: It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has a truetype USE flag. Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- screen Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. I don't like to think about the old lilo days. Bad memories. Reminds me of xorg and hal. o_O Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Apparently, though unproven, at 22:51 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: Alan McKinnon wrote: It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has a truetype USE flag. Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- screen Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. I don't like to think about the old lilo days. Bad memories. Reminds me of xorg and hal. o_O At least you didn't have to deal with booting linux off a floppy -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 22:51 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: Alan McKinnon wrote: It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has a truetype USE flag. Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- screen Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. I don't like to think about the old lilo days. Bad memories. Reminds me of xorg and hal. o_O At least you didn't have to deal with booting linux off a floppy I had to deal with windoze 3.1 tho. I did boot Linux off a floppy one time. That was a long time ago to. It worked to my surprise. It wasn't speedy but it worked. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Sunday 09 January 2011 21:42:22 Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 22:51 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did opine thusly: Alan McKinnon wrote: It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has a truetype USE flag. Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- screen Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the old grub now so it should be to far off. I don't like to think about the old lilo days. Bad memories. Reminds me of xorg and hal. o_O At least you didn't have to deal with booting linux off a floppy I had to deal with windoze 3.1 tho. I did boot Linux off a floppy one time. That was a long time ago to. It worked to my surprise. It wasn't speedy but it worked. SBM? It was a beauty! -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
About three years ago I spent a lot of time on the grub2 mailing list, building grub2 from their svn repo, even submitting a patch or two to get it working for the *BSD family. Then I got old and tired and I settled on gentoo. I deleted all the other OS's from my machines, including (especially) Windows -- so I no longer need to multiboot five different OS's -- and so I lost interest in the sexy new features of grub2. Lately, though, I've been using multiple USB sticks, and having them plugged in at boot-time can confuse legacy grub into booting from the wrong disk, i.e. not booting at all. Very annoying. So, I installed grub-1.98 and I've found that it *does* find partitions by UUID, and even by LABEL, amongst multiple disks. Very nifty. Not so fast, though. I don't know how to write a grub.conf file that can tell grub2 how to do that automatically so I don't need to type commands at the interactive grub2 command prompt. That's where you testosterone-pumped youngsters (Dale? Volker? Alan? Neil? Anyone?) can help fix this basically silly problem. grub2 is enough different from legacy grub to make the learning curve very steep -- but I'm only about half-way up the curve and I'm fading fast. (I usually unplug the offending USB stick and reboot :) If anyone here is interested enough to spend some real time and effort on grub2, I can offer a few pointers, but I'm not willing to do the real grunt work myself. Hm, sunset. Off to bed :)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
On Saturday 08 January 2011 15:36:49 walt wrote: About three years ago I spent a lot of time on the grub2 mailing list, building grub2 from their svn repo, even submitting a patch or two to get it working for the *BSD family. Then I got old and tired and I settled on gentoo. I deleted all the other OS's from my machines, including (especially) Windows -- so I no longer need to multiboot five different OS's -- and so I lost interest in the sexy new features of grub2. Lately, though, I've been using multiple USB sticks, and having them plugged in at boot-time can confuse legacy grub into booting from the wrong disk, i.e. not booting at all. Very annoying. So, I installed grub-1.98 and I've found that it *does* find partitions by UUID, and even by LABEL, amongst multiple disks. Very nifty. Not so fast, though. I don't know how to write a grub.conf file that can tell grub2 how to do that automatically so I don't need to type commands at the interactive grub2 command prompt. That's where you testosterone-pumped youngsters (Dale? Volker? Alan? Neil? Anyone?) can help fix this basically silly problem. grub2 is enough different from legacy grub to make the learning curve very steep -- but I'm only about half-way up the curve and I'm fading fast. (I usually unplug the offending USB stick and reboot :) If anyone here is interested enough to spend some real time and effort on grub2, I can offer a few pointers, but I'm not willing to do the real grunt work myself. Hm, sunset. Off to bed :) a) never used grub2. Not interessted either. Seems to be infected by GNU. Which means 'it doesn't matter that it needs 250mb.. but it got this nifty feature' b) never had a problem with grub booting the wrong disk just because some usb sticks are inserted or esata drive turned on. And I have my bios read grub from a different disk (sdb/c/d) then root (sda) (/boot is on a md raid1 partition, / is on a ssd..) In conclusion: I am out of this. Sorry.
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
walt wrote: About three years ago I spent a lot of time on the grub2 mailing list, building grub2 from their svn repo, even submitting a patch or two to get it working for the *BSD family. Then I got old and tired and I settled on gentoo. I deleted all the other OS's from my machines, including (especially) Windows -- so I no longer need to multiboot five different OS's -- and so I lost interest in the sexy new features of grub2. Lately, though, I've been using multiple USB sticks, and having them plugged in at boot-time can confuse legacy grub into booting from the wrong disk, i.e. not booting at all. Very annoying. So, I installed grub-1.98 and I've found that it *does* find partitions by UUID, and even by LABEL, amongst multiple disks. Very nifty. Not so fast, though. I don't know how to write a grub.conf file that can tell grub2 how to do that automatically so I don't need to type commands at the interactive grub2 command prompt. That's where you testosterone-pumped youngsters (Dale? Volker? Alan? Neil? Anyone?) can help fix this basically silly problem. grub2 is enough different from legacy grub to make the learning curve very steep -- but I'm only about half-way up the curve and I'm fading fast. (I usually unplug the offending USB stick and reboot :) If anyone here is interested enough to spend some real time and effort on grub2, I can offer a few pointers, but I'm not willing to do the real grunt work myself. Hm, sunset. Off to bed :) I have not tried grub2 yet but I did fine these: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2 That has a lot of info on the grub2 conf file. It is called grub.cfg if I read that correctly. There is a lot of info there. Seems a bit complicated since I don't have it installed and can really follow what they mean on things. This next one is a bit more basic tho: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Grub2 This one seems to have a example and not quite so complicated. http://grub.enbug.org/grub.cfg Does those help any? Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] A tiny titillating taste of grub2
=== On Sat, 01/08, walt wrote: === grub2 is enough different from legacy grub to make the learning curve very steep === I did get into grub2 recently, myself. It's hard to imagine anything worse... It's supposed to be just a f* bootloader, not an OS. It needs a complete OS install just to configure it. Bah. I found extlinux. Sweet simplicity. Works great, less filling. It's what I use from now on. -- Keith Dart -- -- ~ Keith Dart ke...@dartworks.biz public key: ID: 19017044 http://www.dartworks.biz/ =
