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Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?



On 08/07/16 03:51 PM, Brian wrote:

On Fri 08 Jul 2016 at 15:08:21 -0400, Gary Dale wrote:


On 08/07/16 02:19 PM, Brian wrote:

On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 23:34:11 -0400, Gary Dale wrote:


On 07/07/16 05:12 PM, Brian wrote:

On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 15:18:05 -0400, Gary Dale wrote:


On 07/07/16 02:55 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 14:39:51 (-0400), Gary Dale wrote:

The big selling feature of Grub over Lilo was that it didn't need to
updated each time you changed something. That fell by the wayside
with Grub 2. Now the big selling feature is that it works with more
than just Linux.

I guess I don't know what you mean by "update".
If I change the contents of grub.cfg, the effect is immediate:
the changes will be seen at the next boot. I don't do anything more.

However the second line of grub.cfg says "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE". If you do
edit it, the changes will be overwritten the next time a debian upgrade
automatically regenerates it. The only method for preserving your changes is
to update the grub templates then run update-grub.

No it's not. dpkg-divert. That's sufficient to search the list archives
for something which has been mentioned a few times but has passed you by.

A lot of trouble for something that can be avoided if you just edit the
correct files in the first place.

Let's see. You write your own grub.cfg or edit the existing one. You
want to preserve your file from being changed so you use a *one line
command* to ensure that. But this one line command is a lot of trouble.
A one line command is onerous?

It is much easier to edit the unspecified "correct files" to stop any
changes to grub.cfg at a Debian upgrade which attempts to regenerate
it? One lives and learns.


Let's see then. You can edit a grub template file or grub.cfg. You make the

No. You edit or devise a grub,cfg. GRUB template files are not involved.
They are irrelevant. You can ignore them because you are doing you own
thing. You have decided what *you* want, not what /etc/grub.d wants to
give you.

If you have some way of easily adjusting files in /etc/grub.d to the
needs of a user I wish you would say.
So that's the problem. You never took the time to RTFM. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Setup#File_Structure 


same change either way but the grub template file won't get clobbered so
there is no need to run dpkg-divert.

It's not the same change. ("grub template file". What is that? There
isn't one as far as I can see).
Again, RTFM. There are lots of files for you to tinker with in /etc/grub.d. You can even add your own and it's guaranteed not be tampered with by any updates. 




Moreover, you don't need to update a system manual to note that you are
diverting a package. You just need to note that a single file is not the
package maintainers default - something you have to do either way.

Diverting is a Debian thing. The GRUB manual would never mention it.
No, but you do have to document each system that you are running. If you are doing anything that is not standard, it has to be recorded so that the next person (or you 3 months later) will know that you've done it.
I gather from your comment that you aren't doing this. That's asking for trouble, especially if you are running custom configurations and protecting them with diversions. Complexity added onto complexity without documentation is a good recipe for disaster.
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