Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
Check out syslinux if grub is too obnoxious. I've found it much more straight forward than grub. On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, 2:05 AM wrote: > So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually that > can handle LUKS partitions? No uefi, but GPT would be nice. The grub2 > "documentation" Reads like someone in the later stages of alzheimers' > trying to tell you how to get to the moon from scratch? The grub "legacy" > manual was at least usefull, the grub2 manual is incoherent and has no > logical structure or explanations in it. It's insane that a boot loader > takes 60 pages to document without actually explaning itself, barely useful > as a reference IF you new it anyway. > > Grub2 produces insanely huge configuration files, stuffed with > conditionals. It's obvious even the automatic tools don't know how to > configure it, It can't figure out how to boot redcore, on the same drive > though it thinks it can. It thinks you might want to try one version of > linux with the ram disk and kernel from another, which doesn't work very > well and WHY? > > any links to sane documentation or sane bootloaders greatly appreciated, > it'll be months before i can work on my own bootloader or extend one that > makes sense out side of a corporate server farm or randomly assorted > desktops that have to all work with the same config file (possibly because > grub2 is deciding how to work every time it loads). > > Yeah, I hate grub2. I"m very willing to learn gentoo, but it does make > some sense and there are articles that actually explain things online. I > can't find anything usefull about grub2 other than "DON'T MANUALLY EDIT > THIS FILE", if it's not human editable and understandable why even bother > to have it in human readable text? > > > "Would you like to see us rule again, my friend? All you have to do is > follow the worms." Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms >
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
On 7/5/19 1:57 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote: In the case of GRUB2 that is unlikely to be the case, as it is meant to do everything. That's why the auto-generated config files are so long and full of conditionals. On a system you have full control over, you can remove all the conditionals. I had grub-mkconfig puke on me recently. I've not spent time diagnosing why. /boot was a local disk (/dev/sda1) per Gentoo install documents. / (root) was special in that it was /dev/nfs. Grub (grub-mkconfig) tossed it's salad, saying: /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of '192.0.2.1:/export/hostname/root' With a return code of 1. GRUB2 is incredibly bendy, if only the documentation were as compliant to the wishes of its users, Sometimes I wonder just how bendy it really is. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
On Fri, 5 Jul 2019 09:32:33 -0600, Grant Taylor wrote: > > it probably is worth taking the time to see if you can bend to the > > tool rather than making the tool bend to you. > > At face value, this is antithetical to how computers should work. > > Computers should do our bidding, NOT the other way around. > > That being said, sometimes it's the case that if you're having to bend > to tool too much, you might be trying to do something the tool is not > meant to do, and as such you should re-think what you're trying to do. In the case of GRUB2 that is unlikely to be the case, as it is meant to do everything. That's why the auto-generated config files are so long and full of conditionals. On a system you have full control over, you can remove all the conditionals. > After that brief sanity check, by all means, bend the tool to your > liking. }:-) GRUB2 is incredibly bendy, if only the documentation were as compliant to the wishes of its users, -- Neil Bothwick Run with scissors. Remove mattress tags. Top post. Be a rebel. pgp46ZPfVk4Dq.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
On 7/5/19 8:04 AM, Rich Freeman wrote: it probably is worth taking the time to see if you can bend to the tool rather than making the tool bend to you. At face value, this is antithetical to how computers should work. Computers should do our bidding, NOT the other way around. That being said, sometimes it's the case that if you're having to bend to tool too much, you might be trying to do something the tool is not meant to do, and as such you should re-think what you're trying to do. After that brief sanity check, by all means, bend the tool to your liking. }:-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 4:10 AM Mick wrote: > > On Friday, 5 July 2019 08:24:14 BST mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote: > > Thank you! Now I don't have to read all the grub2 manual right away. > > You could create manually a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, but this is NOT how > GRUB2 was meant to be used. TBH, if you want to do this, then why bother with > GRUB2 in the first place. You could instead install sys-boot/grub-static from > an overlay and use grub legacy by manually configuring its /boot/grub/ > grub.conf file. The only people who would tell you not to use a manual config would also tell you not to use the old version of grub. There is really no reason to use the old version, except for the fact that the documentation for manual config files on the new one is pretty opaque. The newer version is much more versatile in terms of support for newer filesystems, etc. It just has a preferred mode of operation that basically generates config files that are practically a bootloader in themselves. The old version isn't even in the Gentoo repo, which means that if you do run into problems you'll be using backchannel support. Given that somebody just posted a ready-to-use config file I'd start there. All that said, it probably is worth taking the time to see if you can bend to the tool rather than making the tool bend to you. If you use the standard make install kernel filenames, and edit the grub config files in /etc appropriately, chances are it will generate a nice menu that just works. I used to do it the way you're looking to do it, but find that the tools work pretty well these days and it makes it trivial to maintain a library of old kernel versions which has helped out with the occasional regression. While the autogen config files are a bit complex, they are actually editable and readable. If you skip through all the conditional logic you'll get to the guts of the actual menu options. You can always autogen a config and not send the output to the actual config file if you want to see what it wants to do for reference. -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
190705 mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote: > So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually > that can handle LUKS partitions ? No uefi, but GPT would be nice. You might try Lilo, which is very simple & reliable. I've always used it from before I started using Gentoo in 2003. -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
On Friday, 5 July 2019 08:24:14 BST mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote: > Thank you! Now I don't have to read all the grub2 manual right away. Hardly anyone needs to read the whole GRUB2 manual, unless you're interest to know the ins and outs of GRUB2. However, it would be advisable to skim-read at least this wiki page, which explains which files you could/should edit to make GRUB2 do what you want it to do: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2 > Works > mostly like I thought but first attempt was to edit the mkconfig- grub.cfg > and I failed to back it up Properly. I should have tried it first on a > system that didn't have 4 other distros laying around. As per the above page, you could edit the /etc/default/grub file to define default variables, *then* run the grub-mkconfig command. Depending on your needs you could also add files in /etc/grub.d/ or edit 40_custom. You could create manually a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, but this is NOT how GRUB2 was meant to be used. TBH, if you want to do this, then why bother with GRUB2 in the first place. You could instead install sys-boot/grub-static from an overlay and use grub legacy by manually configuring its /boot/grub/ grub.conf file. https://gpo.zugaina.org/sys-boot/grub-static Alternatively, there are other bootloaders to consider, with sys-boot/syslinux or extlinux featuring as lightweight alternatives. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
Thank you! Now I don't have to read all the grub2 manual right away. Works
mostly like I thought but first attempt was to edit the mkconfig- grub.cfg and
I failed to back it up Properly. I should have tried it first on a system that
didn't have 4 other distros laying around.
"Would you like to see us rule again, my friend? All you have to do is follow
the worms." Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms
Jul 5, 2019, 1:18 AM by ftu...@fastmail.fm:
> On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, at 08:05, mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote:
>
>> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually
>> that can handle LUKS partitions? No uefi, but GPT would be nice.
>>
>
> I have a LUKS-encrypted system, GPT partitions, no UEFI, systemd, dracut,
> btrfs.
>
> I always manually create a /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file without
> using the grub-mkconfig command:
>
> timeout=-1
> menuentry 'Linux-libre 5.1.15' {
> linux /@i3/vmlinuz-5.1.15-gnu
> rd.luks.uuid=luks-e384faa4-d3ad-4171-b38e-8961bddab43f
> root=UUID=90a73cbd-f378-4424-93d9-661cbfec9e5a rootfstype=btrfs
> rootflags=subvol=@i3 init=/lib/systemd/systemd quiet loglevel=3
> rd.vconsole.keymap=it
> initrd /@i3/initramfs-5.1.15-gnu.img
> }
>
> It is pretty simple compared to what grub-mkconfig usually generates, and it
> works pretty well.
>
> --
> https://fturco.gitlab.io/
>
Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, at 08:05, mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote:
> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually
> that can handle LUKS partitions? No uefi, but GPT would be nice.
I have a LUKS-encrypted system, GPT partitions, no UEFI, systemd, dracut, btrfs.
I always manually create a /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file without using
the grub-mkconfig command:
timeout=-1
menuentry 'Linux-libre 5.1.15' {
linux /@i3/vmlinuz-5.1.15-gnu
rd.luks.uuid=luks-e384faa4-d3ad-4171-b38e-8961bddab43f
root=UUID=90a73cbd-f378-4424-93d9-661cbfec9e5a rootfstype=btrfs
rootflags=subvol=@i3 init=/lib/systemd/systemd quiet loglevel=3
rd.vconsole.keymap=it
initrd /@i3/initramfs-5.1.15-gnu.img
}
It is pretty simple compared to what grub-mkconfig usually generates, and it
works pretty well.
--
https://fturco.gitlab.io/
[gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation
So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually that can handle LUKS partitions? No uefi, but GPT would be nice. The grub2 "documentation" Reads like someone in the later stages of alzheimers' trying to tell you how to get to the moon from scratch? The grub "legacy" manual was at least usefull, the grub2 manual is incoherent and has no logical structure or explanations in it. It's insane that a boot loader takes 60 pages to document without actually explaning itself, barely useful as a reference IF you new it anyway. Grub2 produces insanely huge configuration files, stuffed with conditionals. It's obvious even the automatic tools don't know how to configure it, It can't figure out how to boot redcore, on the same drive though it thinks it can. It thinks you might want to try one version of linux with the ram disk and kernel from another, which doesn't work very well and WHY? any links to sane documentation or sane bootloaders greatly appreciated, it'll be months before i can work on my own bootloader or extend one that makes sense out side of a corporate server farm or randomly assorted desktops that have to all work with the same config file (possibly because grub2 is deciding how to work every time it loads). Yeah, I hate grub2. I"m very willing to learn gentoo, but it does make some sense and there are articles that actually explain things online. I can't find anything usefull about grub2 other than "DON'T MANUALLY EDIT THIS FILE", if it's not human editable and understandable why even bother to have it in human readable text? "Would you like to see us rule again, my friend? All you have to do is follow the worms." Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms
