Keith Dart writes:
> === On Sun, 09/11, Alex Schuster wrote: ===
> > Interesting. What are the advantages?
>
> Mainly that it's simpler, as a bootloader should be. However it does
> have some nice features, such as making nice looking, interactive
> menus. You can also edit the config file by hand, if you need to, and
> it's all contained on the boot partition.
>
> The biggest problem with grub 2 is it adds a dependency on having your
> main root partition already mounted in order to configure it. That may
> not be available. Also, when you learn extlinux then you know syslinux,
> isolinux, and pxelinux already which helps when configuring boot
> loaders for those other media.
Thanks for the explanation. I like to learn, knowing how to use them
might come handy some time.
I already installed syslinux recently, I think that was necessary for the
installation of systemrescuecd on USB. Which failed, after using the
installer, the stick was still empty. No idea what went wrong, I did not
dig further into this, I was too busy then.
> > What I like most about Grub is the interactive shell. And that I don't
> > have to run a command like I had to do with Lilo after installing a
> > new kernel.
>
> If you need a shell, boot a minimal kernel and shell from a ramdisk. No
> good reason to bloat a bootloader with that.
I still like how I could make Grub boot a system even when I did not know
on which partition it was. This happened a couple of times, like when I
had multiple hard drives that changed their order. Tab completion or the
find command were good to have then.
And about the bloat... 450 K being used for Grub in /boot is okay for me.
Which could probably be reduced further down to ~115K when removing
stage2{.old,_eltorito} and support for other file systems than ext2.
Wonko
