Re: lilo removal in squeeze (or, "please test grub2")

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Mon, 24 May 2010 05:29:56 -0400 (EDT), Ferenc Wagner wrote:
> Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com> writes:
>>
>> Both grub-legacy and grub-pc use sectors on the hard disk outside of
>> the master boot record [...] This breaks the design of the backup
>> software that my employer uses.  This backup software backs up the
>> master boot record and all partitions; but since the extra sectors
>> used by grub-legacy and grub-pc are outside the master boot record and
>> are not part of any partition, they don't get backed up.
>> Consequently, if we have a hard drive failure and restore from a
>> backup, we have an unbootable machine.  Lilo uses only the master boot
>> record.  A lilo-booted machine can be backed up and restored with our
>> existing backup software just fine.
>
> You may want to try extlinux, it works much like LILO in this respect.
> It lacks a convenient configuration system, but that of grub-legacy
> would be easy to adapt, and I actually plan to work on this.

Thanks for the tip.  That may be an option.  I looked at the documentation
online, and there does not appear to be an option equivalent to lilo's
vga option, though, which I use a lot, especially since svgatextmode
has already been pulled from squeeze.  As of right now, if lilo was
pulled from the distribution, I think I'd be inclined to build my own
lilo package from source before switching to any other bootloader.
To the best of my knowledge, it is the *only* bootloader which supports
setting an initial text video mode *and* does not use any sectors outside
the master boot record and outside of a partition.  If I'm wrong about
that, someone please correct me.

As for a "convenient configuration system", editing a plain text
file is plenty good enough for me.  Your time is yours
to use as you see fit; but if you have the requisite skills to become
the equivalent of lilo upstream, I think there's a lot of people
who would rather that you do that, myself included.  I'd do it myself
if I had the necessary skills and knowledge.  But I don't.

Thanks again for the tip.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-