how to get in touch/communicate in debian?

[DdB <debianlist@potentially-spam.de-bruyn.de>]

Hi,

as a lonely wolf/warrior, i am in the process to move from (previously)
Ubuntu to debian (stable/jessie) for now, mainly to get away from the
information abuse from the distributor. During the first months, i was
pretty much alone with quite a number of unresolved desires, rarely
finding specific hints on the web. It is obvious, that i am not familiar
with communication habits inside the community, nor do i know people
close to me, who are at ease with the OS to teach me.

That is the primary reason for me to ask: Is THIS the right place to get
in touch... or what kind of rules should i get acquainted to, prior to
hitting  public interest?

Instead of listing open technical questions of mine this time, i'd like
to reveal my habit of using ZFS as my main filesystem, and virtualbox as
a major playground. So those are the areas, where questions will be
unlikely.

Instead, let me give an example of how and why i would like to get in
touch with you guys:

update-grub - in debian - uses a script (30_otheros) created and set
aside at installation time, that tends to get outdated pretty fast. And
since i have been switching (dual booting) ubuntu and debian a lot, i
chose a different method to operate grub:
Every OS got a script, that basically creates one (or more) entries into
grub.cfg exploiting the configfile option, thereby leaving the
responsibility to each os to have a properly configured grub.cfg
basically with entries for itself only and configfile entries for the
other OS'es.

This turns out to be flexible, useful and neat, as it integrates well
with the current scripts. I just had to remove (chmod -x) executable
property from the 30_* scripts before adding my own. I am going to
attach it here, even though, it is NOT meant to be ready for public use.
It is just a demonstration of a different way to make use of grub, that
could certainly be improved upon (a.k.a. made faster). So i would like
to give it as a starting point for anybody, who might be interested to
improve it. :-)

This effort of mine could well be too basic for the debian gurus, in
which case, i am willing to hear that as well... Anyway, i guess, there
are better places to forward such an idea to, but i dont know, where to
look at. :-(

Thanks for your attention, DdB

#!/bin/bash -e
# Ich taste mich an grub-Automatisierung heran
#
# Dies geht sowohl mit als auch ohne os-prober, und auch von Ubuntu aus
# dadurch werden die anderen 30_* Scripte überflüssig
# auf debian ist os-prober (Version 1.65) allerdings kaputt und muß dennoch einstweilen verwendet werden

# in Ubuntu werden von os.prober nur TYPE, UUID und LABEL gesetzt !!!

export MNT=/mnt/tmp/mount
mkdir -p $MNT
for d in /dev/sd[a-z][1-9]
do
	unset LABEL PARTLABEL TYPE DEVNAME UUID
	source <(blkid -o export $d)
	if [[ ${TYPE:0:3} != "ext" ]]
	then
		continue
	fi
	bname=`basename $d`
	if which os-prober > /dev/null
	then
		LONGNAME=`os-prober 2> /dev/null | awk -F ':' "/$bname/ { print \\$2; }"`
	else
		LONGNAME="OS ohne os-prober nicht erkannt"
	fi

#	echo $DEVNAME $bname $LONGNAME;continue ###

	if [[ -z $PARTLABEL ]]
	then
		PARTLABEL="$LABEL # `b os-title $d`"
	fi

	# Test, ob grub.cfg vorhanden:
	mpoint=`mount | awk -F ' on| type' "/v\/$bname/ { print \\$2; exit; }"`
	case "x${mpoint}x" in
		"x /x") :
			echo $d ausgelassen, da bereits als / gemountet >&2
			continue;;
		"xx") : # kein Mountpoint vorhanden
			mount $d -o ro $MNT 2> /dev/null
			mpoint=${MNT}/boot/grub/grub.cfg;;
		*) : # anderer Mountpoint bereits vorhanden
			mpoint="${mpoint}/boot/grub/grub.cfg";;
	esac
	if test -f $mpoint
	then
		echo Erstelle configfile für $d >&2
		cat << EOF
menuentry '$PARTLABEL - $LONGNAME (von EINST: $d): - Boot Menü' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-$UUID' {
	insmod part_gpt
	insmod ext2
	search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root $UUID
	configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg
}
EOF
	else
		echo In $d keine grub.cfg $mpoint gefunden. >&2
	fi
	umount $MNT 2>/dev/null || true
done