lilo removal in squeeze (or, "please test grub2")
in [Debian]
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From: Stephen Powell on 23 May 2010 21:10 On Sun, 23 May 2010 16:11:30 -0400 (EDT), William Pitcock wrote: > "Stephen Powell" <zlinuxman(a)wowway.com> wrote: >> (blah blah blah blah) > > Nobody cares if you are opposed to it. Unless you are offering to become > lilo upstream, it's going away. > > William I do understand why a Debian package maintainer does not wish to become "upstream". And I hope that someone who is both willing and able to do so steps up to the plate. But withdrawing it from the distribution seems like overkill to me, especially since you want to withdraw it from Squeeze and not Squeeze+1. Lilo, as it exists today, works just fine for my purposes. And apparently it works just fine for a lot of other people too. The Lord bless you, William. -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1170680188.363342.1274662130640.JavaMail.root(a)md01.wow.synacor.com
From: Ferenc Wagner on 24 May 2010 06:00 Kurt Roeckx <kurt(a)roeckx.be> writes: > On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 01:11:48PM +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote: >> William Pitcock <nenolod(a)dereferenced.org> (22/05/2010): >>> This means that users should *test grub2 extensively* before Squeeze >>> is released so that any issues can be resolved now. >> >> There should also be some folks fixing the discovered issues. > > grub2 currently seems to be having 18 RC bugs, plus a whole bunch > of merged bugs, while lilo only has 1 RC bug. I chatted about this with the grub upstream a couple of days ago. According to Vladimir, most of those bugs are already fixed, but there's nobody around to do a new upload. Both grub maintainers (Felix Zielke and Robert Millan) unexpectedly disappeared some time ago. -- Regards, Feri. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/878w791w0v.fsf(a)tac.ki.iif.hu
From: Ferenc Wagner on 24 May 2010 06:10 Stephen Powell <zlinuxman(a)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. -- Regards, Feri. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d3wl1wbv.fsf(a)tac.ki.iif.hu
From: Stephen Powell on 24 May 2010 10:20 On Mon, 24 May 2010 05:36:32 -0400 (EDT), Ferenc Wagner wrote: > Kurt Roeckx <kurt(a)roeckx.be> wrote: >> On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 01:11:48PM +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote: >>> William Pitcock <nenolod(a)dereferenced.org> (22/05/2010): >>>> This means that users should *test grub2 extensively* before Squeeze >>>> is released so that any issues can be resolved now. >>> >>> There should also be some folks fixing the discovered issues. >> >> grub2 currently seems to be having 18 RC bugs, plus a whole bunch >> of merged bugs, while lilo only has 1 RC bug. > > I chatted about this with the grub upstream a couple of days ago. > According to Vladimir, most of those bugs are already fixed, but there's > nobody around to do a new upload. Both grub maintainers (Felix Zielke > and Robert Millan) unexpectedly disappeared some time ago. What about Jordi Mallach and Colin Watson? The package page for grub-pc http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/grub-pc lists them as maintainers too. Have they disappeared as well? Or are they no longer maintainers for this package? In which case their names should be removed from the web page. Somehow I feel a dip in motivation. -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1054400013.5379.1274709588267.JavaMail.root(a)md01.wow.synacor.com
From: Stephen Powell on 24 May 2010 11:10
On Mon, 24 May 2010 05:29:56 -0400 (EDT), Ferenc Wagner wrote: > Stephen Powell <zlinuxman(a)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 : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1012155825.7010.1274712448896.JavaMail.root(a)md01.wow.synacor.com |