Re: Proposed release goal: Switch to GRUB2
Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> writes:
> On Wednesday 25 April 2007 14:59, Otavio Salvador wrote:
>> We, the GRUB team, want to swtich to GRUB2 due many reasons, basicaly:
>> - better codebase;
>
> Is grub2 fundamentally different from grub, or is it basically based on
> the current grub but just developed further?
>
>> - multi-arch support;
A complete rewrite code.
> Do you really mean multi-arch or just "supports more architectures"?
>
>> Our current plan is to finish the update-grub2 merging on upstream
>> side (being handled by Robert) and then upload a new package to
>> Debian. This package after moving to lenny ought be set as default
>> boot-loader in grub-installer (while we still offer grub as an option
>> during the test cicle).
>
> How well has the new grub been tested so far?
It has some regular users and they hadn't complained about issue since
some time. We're hopping to get a new snapshot in next week or so.
> Are there any use cases that grub2 is not known to support that grub
> does support?
Not that I'm aware of but probably has.
> Have all the regular installs already been checked (e.g. root on
> raid1)?
I hadn't check raid1 myself.
> Has e.g. support for Xen been checked?
It works.
> Has grub2 been checked for obvious past issues we've had in grub (like
> /dev/cciss/c0d0 support)?
It should support. Is difficult to test it without hardware access.
> Has been checked that grub2 scripts don't write to stdout?
Yes.
> Does grub2 solve any of the issues we currently have with grub?
> - xfs support
Looks like.
> - lvm support
I hadn't check
> - wrong detection of correct boot device in BIOS
I hadn't check
> It would be really nice to have a wiki page comparable to the one for the
> initrd generator change [1] that gives an overview of such issues.
Yes, that's on my todo list.
>> The upgrade from grub to grub2 will be transparent since menu.list can
>> be automaticaly converted to the new format and this will be in place
>> when we start the default boot-loader change.
>
> Does the conversion program support all possible features in a current
> grub menu.lst or are there areas where this is uncertain?
The current sid version basically uses the same code and should
work. The new code is being written and should cope with all them.
> How widely has the conversion script been tested?
Not finished yet but shouldn't be too complex and difficult to test.
>> After doing it, we intend to drop grub from archive since it's a bunch
>> of patches difficult to maintain and hard to follow.
>
> If you really mean to deprecate grub in favor of grub2, then you should
> probably rename grub2 to grub at some point before the release of Lenny.
Yes. It's still being dicussed if we'll or not do it. It's mostly
depend of how stable grub2 proves to be.
--
O T A V I O S A L V A D O R
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