Update from a conversation on #grub: <cjwatson> Jordan_U: oh, BTW, regarding that debconf dialog that confuses so many people: what I have in my working tree right now is a rearrangement that offers all the disk devices, and only the partition device containing /boot <cjwatson> Jordan_U: does that sound reasonable to you? <Jordan_U> cjwatson: Yes, the only possible issue being people that only install to the partition and so things get out of sync. It seems like most of the people who were messing up were either not reading at all and choosing nothing (fixed) and reading poorly and selecting everything (harmless with proposed change). <cjwatson> Jordan_U: the worst bit seems to have been people trying to install to NTFS partitions, so that should certainly go away <cjwatson> Jordan_U: I thought about an Advanced option, but since I can't think of a good reason for people to install other than to the partition containing /boot (actually /boot/grub), there doesn't seem a need for it <cjwatson> (and Advanced is awkward to cram in there for various reasons, so best avoided if possible) <cjwatson> Jordan_U: hm, maybe if /boot and / are separate then I should offer / as well, just in case <cjwatson> I want to minimise the number of people who scream at me for breaking their special configuration <Jordan_U> cjwatson: Maybe it should warn if grub is only installed to a partition and not to any MBR. That way you have to be really stubborn to do something wrong, but there's no extra cruft for sane (and partially sane) configurations. <cjwatson> Jordan_U: as well as the warning in the text accompanying the menu? <Jordan_U> cjwatson: Yes. <cjwatson> Jordan_U: I can probably live with that. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have a look <cjwatson> Jordan_U: (though I don't want to encourage people to install to a partition *and* to an MBR!) <Jordan_U> cjwatson: What harm does it cause? <cjwatson> Confusion. <cjwatson> e.g. you try to debug something and run 'grub-install /dev/sda5' because you think grub is there, only to find out that you were actually booting from /dev/sda all along <cjwatson> perhaps I'm being over-paranoid
I'm not sure about the install-to-partition warning yet, but the idea is not without merit, so I'll ponder it. If I implement such a warning, I would have to be careful to avoid requiring extra work for preseeded deployments. -- Ubuntu Lucid grub2 dist-upgrades result in confusion https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/576724 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
