A rant regarding LILO and various other related issues

Chris Adams cmadams at hiwaay.net
Fri Apr 15 18:46:00 UTC 2005


Once upon a time, Timothy Murphy <tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> said:
> As a matter of interest, how did you "fix" the computer remotely
> if it did not boot?
> I would not have thought the serial connection would be alive.

Since this computer was not hooked to an IP power switch at the time, I
had to have "remote hands" power cycle it for me.  I then interrupted it
during boot at the GRUB prompt to change the boot options (point at a
different kernel and initrd and use different kernel options).

> I find the arrogance of the Fedora team in failing to facilitate this minority
> rather disturbing.

Fedora Core also has dropped packages I like and use (as did RHL).  I
bitched about a few of them, but I did not insult the very people I
wanted to see it my way.  FC is also not about catering to every
request; that way lies madness.

GRUB works in the vast majority of cases and is more flexible than LILO.
GRUB has a menu, which is much more "user-friendly" (especially to those
that dual boot other OSes).  GRUB allows easy changing of boot options
at the menu (so for example while I may normally use "quiet" mode, I can
strip it off for a single boot without having to edit a config file and
re-install the boot loader).

Since GRUB reads the filesystem at boot time (instead of boot-loader
install time), copying or renaming a kernel/initrd or defragmenting (or
even remaking) a filesystem causes no problems.

> Incidentally, the interactive option in grub, which you praise,
> could be greatly improved;
> it is not at all clear how to use it.
> With a little more thought it could be self-explanatory.

It has some built-in help which describes enough for most things.

> This hd(0,1) stuff is nonsense, for a start.

Well, what do you want it to use?  This is prior to boot, so /dev/hda is
meaningless.  How about "C:"?  It is fairly straight-forward; hd0 is the
first BIOS drive, hd1 is the second, (hd0,0) is the first partition on
the first BIOS drive, etc.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.




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