Re: LILO

[Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>]

On Thursday 10 May 2001 13:47, Robert van der Meulen wrote:
> > After I have tested it I will upload that version to unstable.  It will
> > also be without debconf support, I have no plans to re-add debconf to
> > lilo.
>
> I don't know if this has come up before, but would it be useful to have a
> Provides: boot-loader for lilo, as well as for 'grub' (and other
> bootloaders), and have the packages currently depending on 'lilo' depend on
> 'boot-loader' ?
> I'm having a hard time keeping 'lilo' off my system, as i use grub.

Sounds like a reasonable idea.  But I think that part of the problem is 
unnecessary dependencies.

Kernel images produced by kernel-package depend on lilo.  Machines which boot 
with grub, loadlin, syslinux, "cat /boot/vmLinuz > /dev/fd0", and other boot 
methods don't need lilo.
NFS-root machines never need a boot loader (whatever method is used to load 
the kernel is outside the control of the OS).

Maybe the solution would be a task-boot-loader package which is essential and 
depends on one of the various boot loaders.  If you force-remove the 
task-boot-loader package then you are free from such dependencies for your 
NFS-root machine...

I've CC'd the maintainers of grub and kernel-package in on this.

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