[lug] grub2 boot (ubuntu 10.04)

[Davide Del Vento]

>> linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro
>> initrd /initrd.img
>> boot
>>
>> It boots fine and everything works. However I need this machine
>> booting by itself, I cannot be there in person at each reboot.
>
> I haven't had to modify anything in the grub config.  There should be an update-grub command (there
> is on Debian) that should build what you need in /boot/grub.  Try putting the defaults back and run
> that command.

Of course I did that as first thing hours before sending the message
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. I was stuck with the problem of turning these
interactive commands of grub into a suitable configuration file which
does the same thing. And when anything goes wrong, grub stops and
gives you the prompt, without saying *WHAT* went wrong (like LILO did
"stopping" the print at any of the letters of the LILO word). So I'm
trying blindfold

>> PS: I'm getting crazy, now that I was becoming familiar with grub and
>> its menu.lsf, they come out with this crappy grub2. GRRRR I want LILO
>> back
>
> I never used grub much because it didn't support /boot on LVM.  grub2 is much better than LILO.

Much better at what? Using different fonts? Better highlight colors?
Displaying splash screens? Theme
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Theme-file-format.html
? User Interface
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Interface.html ? Or
maybe the terrific troubleshooting documentation
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Troubleshooting.html
?
Well, when grub will be able to play youtube on its (currently)
useless prompt, then it'll be "much better".

Now, its only useful functionality is booting the OS, and it's failing
in my case. On the other hand LILO was dead-simple: excellent
documentation, single configuration file, installable from live system
without the pain of doing chroot. Its only limitation was with large
disks you had to have the kernel in the first (small) partition, but
that's never been a problem: once you understand it, the workaround
its straightforward. At least for me, it might be that the hw support
of strange BIOS, LVM or other server stuff I don't even know they
exist is actually better... But not on the desktop.
Grub and now Grub2 are a nightmare. Gazillions of configuration files,
not-so-good docs, and cryptic behavior. They say, once you figure out
what you have to do at the grub> prompt (which I did) you just do the
same thing (with a different syntax, damn) in some other file(s) and
it works. It doesn't.

> Its
> behavior isn't that hard to grok, although if you have to debug how the boot code is built that's
> more complicated than previous booters.  But I haven't had any trouble with that part.
>
> I have an old box that wouldn't boot with grub2 due to a BIOS problem.  Eventually the Debian
> maintainer figured out how to work around it in response to my bug report.

This machine works with grub2, just works manually, not automatically,
so the issue must be something else. I tried everything reasonable
(for the syntax translation plus the choice of file in which to write
it). I also tried everything described here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2. I tried wiping the entire
hard disk, repartioning it differently and restarting the installation
from scratch. Twice. With a different media. The best I could get was
a grubrescue> instead of grub> prompt. Or a grub legacy (not grub2)
"Error 18" message.

Probably you'll understand why I'm so bitter when you'll know that
this machine had a working Ubuntu 10.04 installation on it, which I
wiped only because it became too messy and I wanted to start from
scratch. So I'm sure the hardware is supported and fine (unless it
decided to break right during the reinstall). The only software
difference is that the previous installation came from a Ubuntu 8.04 +
upgrade instead of Ubuntu 10.04 media. This would be my last test,
before to ditch the sucker and call it a brick.

Unless anybody has better suggestions, of course.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your time :-) and sorry for the rant :-D
Davide