[lug] grub2 boot (ubuntu 10.04)

[Davide Del Vento]

>> to the mailing list, without any success. For sake of brevity I was
>> not reporting all the things that I did and failed, but only this one
>> which kind-of-succeeded.
>
> For whose sake? Your saving a vew keystrokes made some of use waste
> their debugging skills :-) To decide what information to leave out you
> pretty much have to know the solution already.

I tested a few dozens things, so it would not have been a short message...
David, I haven't sent the "changed" files, since this is a fresh
install, so "everything" has changed.

>> >> its menu.lsf, they come out with this crappy grub2. GRRRR I want LILO
>> >> back
>
> So install it: it's an a repository nearby.
> http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=lilo

Sure, I know. But if I do, does a kernel update propagate into LILO or
should I do it manually at every update?

> Not to mention RAID support, support for different file
> systems, different operating systems etc.

Now, I'm glad that grub supports things that you use and care about
(which I never cared - but LILO too supported at least other OSes, so
you are exaggerating like I was - just in the other direction)
>From replies here onlist, Google and forums, it looks like there are
others who think the same as me... And if you look at the official
docs, it looks like most of the efforts are for the cosmetics, just a
small amount goes into the "beef", and almost nothing into
troubleshooting: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
For example, neither the error I was getting before ("Error 18") nor
the one I'm getting right now ("out of disk") are even mentioned! But
since after spitting my current error the system is booting now, I'll
probably pretend the error isn't happening and be happy.
Do you have a better documentation somewhere else to recommend?

> I've successfully restored
> systems with just a remote (serial) console and grub, something I never
> managed with lilo. I still remember those phone calls " .... o.k., now
> what does the screen say  .. hmm, L I, o.k. now reset that box and, oh,
> damn, I'll be there in five hours ..".

That would be handy, even if my box is on the same desk (because, for
example, I can much easily log what I've done, cut and paste, and
similar missing things, without which I feel like going naked on the
street)
I guess I need special hardware support for the BIOS, right? If so,
I'll bet mine doesn't have the feature. Interestingly enough, grub2
official docs (the ones I mention above) just mention the thing,
without explaining how do do it. What documentation should I read for
it?

> ??? I never chrooted to install grub. What documentation _did_ you read?

Not to install it, but to debug/reinstall it. I've read (among other
things) this one: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
As you probably remember, with LILO I just had to change the path of
the config file according to the different mount point, without the
need for chrooting (but maybe that's a Ubuntu, more than grub2 issue,
I haven't investigated it much).

> So you're that "average desktop user guy". Nice to meet you.
> And I'm glad too hear that you guys finally settled on 500 Mb harddisks,
> BIOS with APM and ext2 file systems :-)

I guess given the rant I wrote you've been too kind :-)
But filesystems size/issues are only for the boot partition(s), so
it's not really a problem.

> Unfortunately, my users are multimedia artists with terrabyte disk, and
> they insist on RAID systems for speed and reliability, and all those
> weired file systems ...

Multimedia artists using Linux? I thought they used only proprietary
OSes. Glad to learn about them, Do you mind elaborating a little bit,
what software do the use, etc? Any photographer doing serious work?

> but I'm afraid the drive would be too long :-)

Thanks for your time!

Davide