Re: What happened to debian - does "stable" keep having any meaning?
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Mark <mamarcac@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> wrote:
>> Geronimo:
>> > Jochen Schulz wrote:
>> >>
>> >> AFAICS, we can rule out the kernel as the cuplrit completely, as grub
>> >> doesn't even get that far.
>> >
>> > VETO - after reboot, you might be right, but what happens during
>> > update-grub?
>>
>> update-grub only creates the configuration file, it doesn't write the
>> MBR or anything like that.
>
> I'm very thankful for Debian, but must agree with some of the posts here
> regarding GRUB2's placement in Stable. Even when it detects another
> operating system during installation, and you give it approval to add to the
> boot menu, upon reboot after fresh installation it doesn't appear in the
> boot menu. Some edits to /etc/default/grub and /boot/grub/grub.cfg (the one
> that says "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE") can make it work (after some pretty
> extensive Googling for those of us who aren't GRUB2 gurus). It just seems
> odd that control was taken away from the user regarding superficial things
> like the name that appears on the GRUB boot menu/splash screen upon
> startup. Most people I help out really don't want to see that Windows 7 is
> on /dev/sda2, for example, and the only way to change it is with editing a
> file that says it shouldn't be edited.
Theoretically, you only need to edit "/etc/default/grub" to customize
grub.cfg. I've been using grub2 since the alphas of Ubuntu 9.10 and
I'm amazed that there are still problems given all the - essentially -
beta-testing that Ubuntu and Arch (and perhaps others but these are
the ones who stand out from my perspective, along with squeeze-testing
and sid users) have done since Fall 2009. At least from Fall 2009 to
Spring 2010. I prefer grub1 but grub2 works but it just seems to be
too complex compared to grub1.
If you just run "update-grub" and everything falls into place (as I'm
sure it does now in *most* cases), all's well; and you could do the
same with grub1 on Debian. I never used update-grub with grub1 (I'm a
Solaris/RHEL admin "by day" so I tried it out of curiosity when I
started supporting Debian but chose to stick to editing menu.lst
directly so as not to have to learn an unnecessary Debianism) but I
suspect there it was just one script that used the "AUTOMAGIC" section
of "/boot/grub/menu.lst" to modify "/boot/grub/menu.lst".
With grub2, if you want to troubleshoot update-grub and the resulting
"/boot/grub/grub.cfg", you have to look at "/etc/default/grub",
"/etc/grub.d/*", "/usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib", and
"/usr/bin/grub-mkconfig". You might not need to do so often (I haven't
had to do so for my boxes for a very long time) but, if and when you
do, it borders on silly...
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