Re: Re: lilo entry for Knoppix on hard disk.
>>Can grub4dos boot Linux reliably from DVD? I'm not quite sure. :-(
It should be possible to modify it in case it can't. I think it might be good to have a more pro-active attitude hereafter, in particular when it is about features that have more general interest beyond Knoppix. More about this below.
>>I think it got more complicated to set up the Windows bootmenu for
>>booting Linux in "Windows 7". There is no textfile like boot.ini anymore
>>which can be edited with a simple text editor in order to extend the
>>menu.
Sure, now (from Vista onwards) it is necessary to update the registry-like "database" that the loader uses. Which is not too difficult to do, but I don't think would be the right way to go unless there is a permanent install. Chances are not small that the mechanism will be modified by upcoming service packs, potentially creating lots of problems and error messages for little practical advantage.
>If I remember this right grub4dos incorporated or got inspired from the same boot mechanism as used by isolinux.
>(Easy to verify in the changelog files or source code) Btw, grub4dos works great for me on all my systems.
Not being file system agnostic, I think legacy grub fails its pretentions to be the grand unified bootloader. Sadly, grub2 makes this even worse by virtually insisting on configuration via /etc - failing the second important criterion: Being independent of install instances. Legacy grub installed in its own ext2 boot partition meets this criterion, IMHO in an elegant and practical way. But the requirement of an own (Unix-formatted) partition is too strong for general use. Therefore, the only real contender, as far as I can see now, is grub4dos. Furthermore, it should be possible to adapt grub4dos to our needs - I don't think we need that much of bells and whistles, just rock solid performance in the basic use cases. I think that when it already works great for Gilles, general great performance should be at most a couple of UI modifications away! :-)
>Again if you want to keep isolinux, please at least just add a boot entry to start grub4dos from isolinux,
>so users can use your cd/dvd to start an interactive boot loader (grub4dos) in order to boot and recover their broken system.
>(more precisely, via the inetractive grub interface someone can navigate
through the file systems, find and boot their boot menu config file)
I will add a suggestion to this excellent one: With USB installs, think about taking "snapshots" of the boot configuration of several computers, so if something breaks down, the stick can be used as a rescue stick. Lots of Knoppix users already use a simple variant of this when we boot from stick and then load and run poor man's hard disk images. This could even be combined with different sort of diagnostic tools (think, for example) of Windows ntfs repair tools running under Wine, so that, if booting fails or problems are diagnosed, users can continue diagnosing/rescue from their stick. This will be far easier with sticks than CD/DVD - maybe tool sets could even be .deb-packaged and installed when needed?
Reply to: