Bug#337779: release-notes do not suggest re-running lilo
Package: release-notes
Yesterday I upgraded a machine from woody to sarge, reading and
carefully following the procedure given in the release notes.
The upgrade went generally smoothly (in contrast to my experiences
on my own machine, but that's another story). Then I read section
4.6, `Things to do before rebooting', did everything appropriate in
there, and rebooted.
The machine turned out to be unbootable. I emergency-booted it by
the use of the GRUB floppy image in the `grub-disk' package (which
is the best rescue floppy I've seen in ages), re-ran lilo, and then
all was well.
Since we hadn't upgraded the kernel (as the release notes told us
not to), it hadn't occurred to me that we might need to re-run lilo.
However, we did, and presumably (with hindsight) the reason was that
the LILO second stage had changed due to the upgrade of the lilo
package itself. At no point did lilo automatically re-run (probably
a good thing - I might have had the package installed but not
currently have been using it as my bootloader) or offer to re-run
(which perhaps it should have).
It would have saved a _lot_ of pain if section 4.6 of the release
notes had prominently contained a notice saying `make sure you
re-run lilo if you're using it as your bootloader'.
I'm not entirely sure whether this should be in the release notes or
whether the lilo package should have displayed a notice as part of
its upgrade. Please feel free to reassign this bug to the lilo
package if the latter is more appropriate. However, I'm absolutely
sure that _something_ should have reminded me to rerun lilo!
Cheers,
Simon
--
Simon Tatham "Thieves respect property; they only wish the property to
<anakin@pobox.com> be their own, that they may more properly respect it."
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