On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 10:24 PM Emmanuel Kasper <emmanuel@libera.cc> wrote:
> Currently, both the Openstack images and the image built for Azure are
> using extlinux instead of Grub. I think this is mostly due to a personal
> preference from Zigo. extlinux works fine but this is a deviation of
> what a user would expect of a regular Debian installation.
>
> Should cloud images be allowed to change the bootloader?
>
I would say Yes, if there is a documented reason for the change.
I don't know what was the intent of Zigo, but if you need to install a
bootloader inside a diskimage, it is much less convoluted to do it with
extlinux than with grub
(example with grub
https://github.com/andsens/bootstrap-vz/blob/0b9c8181feec6fb3c6818b0d75e29b100bd751bf/bootstrapvz/common/tasks/grub.py)
Emmanuel
> but if you need to install a bootloader inside a diskimage, it is much less convoluted to do it with extlinux than with grub
That's putting it mildly. grub2 fixed a lot, but with 1.99 you were in for a WORLD of pain when doing this (as an example see line 46 in the above link for a workaround that took me weeks to get working properly).
extlinux is simpler and behaves more unix-y in this regard: do one thing and do it well. It doesn't try to be smart about things, it does as its told. Frankly most of it can probably be attributed to the work of Daniel Baumann of debian-live fame, who maintained the extlinux-update script, which did all the legwork.
Unfortunately we don't have that tool in jessie any longer (haphazardly summarized
in this issue), which means extlinux is basically a no-go for jessie (i.e. dist-upgrade does not autofix the extlinux config).