[lug] grub2 boot (ubuntu 10.04)

[rm at tuxteam.de]

On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 05:06:20PM -0600, Davide Del Vento wrote:
> >> >> 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?

No idea, haven't tried lilo for quite a while. But isn't it this kind
of automagic bootmanager configuration what creates the complexity in
the first place? A script that generates lilo.conf probably is as
cryptic (if not more) as the current /etc/grub.d/ stuff.

> > 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

Hmm, don't equal _documentation_ effort with programming effort.Rest
assured, there's quite a lot of programming effort spent on making a 
stable, reliable, modular unified boot manager.

> 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?

Error 18:  Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
 This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block
 address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally
 happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for
 (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general). 

This is from
http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/grub/html_chapter/grub_13.html

Unfortunately. the grub wiki is not reachable (some stupid DNS mixup,
server migration etc.). 
Still a valuable place to find information:
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/p20.html

> 
> 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? 

That or a KVM - baut that might be a rather expensive solution.


> 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).

No need to CHROOT, it just makes certain esoteric rescue attempts
easier - man grub-install is all you need.


> > 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?

More on that later ;-)


 Cheers, RalfD