RE: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
-Original Message- From: Iain Buchanan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 9:26 AM To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader I'm happy to leave the info vs man flamewar for someone else, but what I _don't_ like is when you have both man and info, and one of them is very deficient (in grub's case, man). The description is different, less informative, and quite misleading. Instead, is should say either nothing but refer to info pages; or it should be the same as the info pages... would anyone agree? That is exactly what a number of packages do I think. I have seen many of them that the man page and the info page were identicle. More often though it looked like they made a decent man page, and coppied it to info. :-) z� ��(��j)b� b�
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Thursday 19 July 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote about 'RE: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader': I have seen many of them that the man page and the info page were identicle. More often though it looked like they made a decent man page, and coppied it to info. info automatically pulls man pages an reformats them if there not info page for that node and there exists a man page with that name. I'm fairly sure most info-viewers (including kio_info) do so. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.org/ \_/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wednesday 18 July 2007, Stroller wrote: It's enough to make the average person's head spin (and does) - it can easily take two hours for me to get a class full of reasonably bright Windows techies to grasp ... You clearly have more experience than I do with teaching novices about Linux. You might ask them to consider - as a teaching aid - the Windows XP boot.ini file (I believe this is retired in Vista). Lucky it's something we don't run into too often :-) I eventually figured out that how boot loading works is something most techies don't get into all that often. They understand all the various bits in isolation but when these bits are used together by grub it's ... different ... to normal use of the OS. Much the same as living in Europe and driving on the left, then going to the US and trying to drive on the right. For a few days your driving style is all fingers and thumbs but it settles down after some practice alan -- Optimists say the glass is half full, Pessimists say the glass is half empty, Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
Hi, On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:55:58 +0930 Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm happy to leave the info vs man flamewar for someone else, but what I _don't_ like is when you have both man and info, and one of them is very deficient (in grub's case, man). The description is different, less informative, and quite misleading. Instead, is should say either nothing but refer to info pages; or it should be the same as the info pages... Yeah, like a short synopsis and then a clear reference, let's say along the lines of snip The full documentation for grub is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and grub programs are properly installed at your site, the command info grub should give you access to the complete manual. snip But looking at grub(8), it seems someone was faster. SCNR. -hwh -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 13:36 +0200, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote: Hi, On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:55:58 +0930 Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm happy to leave the info vs man flamewar for someone else, but what I _don't_ like is when you have both man and info, and one of them is very deficient (in grub's case, man). The description is different, less informative, and quite misleading. Instead, is should say either nothing but refer to info pages; or it should be the same as the info pages... Yeah, like a short synopsis and then a clear reference, let's say along the lines of snip [snip] But looking at grub(8), it seems someone was faster. SCNR. OK, I'm an idiot. I blabbed off at `man grub` without actually looking at it... I thought it said something along the lines of the online grub manual quoted by the OP... back to my hole. -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au You know, Moe, my mom once said something that really stuck with me. She said, `Homer, you're a big disappointment,' and, God bless her soul, she was really onto something. -- Homer Simpson There's No Disgrace Like Home -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On 18 Jul 2007, at 13:35, Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: ... You can get everything at once and in the same place using the online docs: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html This manual is very excellent. I believe you can also get it in PDF format - I printed it out over 3 years ago and still occasionally refer to it. How I miss my former employers' printer which would fold stable paper to give A4 A5 booklets. The GRUB manual is as good as lots of books you'd pay $$$ for. And they are also written with the assumption that the reader understands the confines a boot loader has to work in. I don't know. I think the overview is pretty clear http:// www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Overview, and leads into the remainder of the documentation quite well. Stroller. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wednesday 18 July 2007, Stroller wrote: On 18 Jul 2007, at 13:35, Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: ... You can get everything at once and in the same place using the online docs: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html This manual is very excellent. I believe you can also get it in PDF format - I printed it out over 3 years ago and still occasionally refer to it. How I miss my former employers' printer which would fold stable paper to give A4 A5 booklets. The GRUB manual is as good as lots of books you'd pay $$$ for. Yes, it is good documentation, in that everything is there - complete docs are a rare thing these days. But few people that I've come across thought to check the info pages and get it. And they are also written with the assumption that the reader understands the confines a boot loader has to work in. I don't know. I think the overview is pretty clear http:// www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Overview, and leads into the remainder of the documentation quite well. Well there's at least two people who know how boot loaders work. But it's not an easy concept to grasp for the average person. I get a feel that you are not an average person so your impressions are not valid for them. The big stumbling block is getting people to grasp that grub is not an OS, it's not a linux app as linux is not in memory yet. And yet, it can still read files and dirs that linux put there, and it's config file read at run time is a linux file. It's enough to make the average person's head spin (and does) - it can easily take two hours for me to get a class full of reasonably bright Windows techies to grasp why you use kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz-version options with a separate boot partition, and kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-version options when /boot is not a separate partition. Then there's the bit about grub being able to load linux and Multiboot-compliant kernels natively, but Windows and others must be chainloaded... None of this means that the grub docs are poor - it's just that bootloaders are tricky beasts to grasp and the docs are correspondingly hard to write so that Joe Average User gets it all first time through -- Optimists say the glass is half full, Pessimists say the glass is half empty, Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wednesday 18 July 2007 01:02, Iain Buchanan wrote: On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 18:12 -0500, »Q« wrote: In news:[EMAIL PROTECTED], Thufir [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've read the GRUB documentation, but still don't understand why the following worked: [snip grub.conf] I would've thought that the chainloader +1 statement would be required -- that's my experience at least. It's only needed if you're booting an unsupported (by grub) OS; no only unsupported OSs, you can chainload anything (bootable) such as another linux distro, which has installed a bootloader into the partition. See how this guy booted 30+ OS's from grub: http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=134856 it tells grub to just hand off to another bootloader. The +1 tells grub to load the first sector of the OS's partition, which is where the other bootloader should be embedded. As long as you're booting Linux kernels, you can just point grub at them without using another bootloader. you mean as long as grub understands the kernel and filesystem, you can tell grub to load the kernel directly, with provided arguments. I think :) If you have some reason not to mix one OS', or distro's boot files, kernels, etc with another, plus if you want to try a different version of grub then you can install grub separately in the new OS partition (instead of the MBR) and chainload this from your primary grub installation. Should you wish to remove the new OS at a later date, you will not need to rummage through the primary OS' /boot to clean out redundant kernel images and what not. Otherwise, as already mentioned, Grub will boot natively all Linux distros. -- Regards, Mick pgpafdje2jzBm.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:53:45 +0100, Mick wrote: If you have some reason not to mix one OS', or distro's boot files, kernels, etc with another, plus if you want to try a different version of grub then you can install grub separately in the new OS partition (instead of the MBR) and chainload this from your primary grub installation. Should you wish to remove the new OS at a later date, you will not need to rummage through the primary OS' /boot to clean out redundant kernel images and what not. You don't need to mix files to have more than one distro boot from the same GRUB menu, just set the root() parameter accordingly for each distro. -- Neil Bothwick I am NOT Paranoid! And why are you always watching me?? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On 18 Jul 2007, at 16:00, Alan McKinnon wrote: ... I don't know. I think the overview is pretty clear http:// www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Overview, and leads into the remainder of the documentation quite well. ... The big stumbling block is getting people to grasp that grub is not an OS, it's not a linux app as linux is not in memory yet. And yet, it can still read files and dirs that linux put there, and it's config file read at run time is a linux file. Um... surely the config file (um... grub.conf, right?) is _just_ a file. It's not a Linux file, it's not a GRUB file, it's just a text file, which can be edited by any operating system that can write to the partition. I have in the past considered putting grub.conf on a FAT32 partition - I'm not 101% sure that'd work but I've never tried because I never actually saw the usefulness. It's enough to make the average person's head spin (and does) - it can easily take two hours for me to get a class full of reasonably bright Windows techies to grasp ... You clearly have more experience than I do with teaching novices about Linux. You might ask them to consider - as a teaching aid - the Windows XP boot.ini file (I believe this is retired in Vista). Boot.ini can be edited in Windows' Notepad in much the same way grub.conf can be edited with vi or nano. Very few Windows users will have any experience of doing more than removing an extra line (where the system was dual-booting to a previous installation of Millennium Edition, for instance) or reducing the countdown time before automatically booting the default entry, but if your students are bright then they will be aware of the boot.ini and will have done that much. Stroller. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:06:57 +0100, Stroller wrote: I have in the past considered putting grub.conf on a FAT32 partition - I'm not 101% sure that'd work but I've never tried because I never actually saw the usefulness. It will work, provided you call the file menu.lst, because the GRUB FAT driver can only handle 8.3 filenames. The same applies when using GRUB on a CD, it can't read grub.conf because it's not an ISO 9660 Level 1 name, but it works fine with menu.lst. So, in a way, grub.conf is a Linux file, because it needs to be on a Linux filesystem for GRUB to read it :-/ -- Neil Bothwick What Aussies lack in Humour they make up for in Beer! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On 23:51 Tue 17 Jul, Thufir wrote: Oh. Why was the grub documentation not understandable like that? maybe I misread it. thanks for explaining! I guess you missed it. `info grub' says (*Note chainloading) ---8---8 4.1.2 Load another boot loader to boot unsupported operating systems If you want to boot an unsupported operating system (e.g. Windows 95), chain-load a boot loader for the operating system. Normally, the boot loader is embedded in the boot sector of the partition on which the operating system is installed. 1. Set GRUB's root device to the partition by the command `rootnoverify' (*note rootnoverify::): grub rootnoverify (hd0,0) 2. Set the active flag in the partition using the command `makeactive'(1) (*note Chain-loading-Footnote-1::) (*note makeactive::): grub makeactive 3. Load the boot loader with the command `chainloader' (*note chainloader::): grub chainloader +1 `+1' indicates that GRUB should read one sector from the start of the partition. The complete description about this syntax can be found in *Note Block list syntax::. 4. Run the command `boot' (*note boot::). However, DOS and Windows have some deficiencies, so you might have to use more complicated instructions. *Note DOS/Windows::, for more information. ---8---8 Note that it's usually better to refer to the info command for more serious documentation about GNU tools in general. RMS and his guys don't exactly seem to like manpages that much that's what they have info for. They have their point, but that's another flame war ;-) Regards, Aleks pgpXZkkTQcS02.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On 7/18/07, Александър Л. Димитров [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 23:51 Tue 17 Jul, Thufir wrote: Oh. Why was the grub documentation not understandable like that? maybe I misread it. thanks for explaining! I guess you missed it. `info grub' says (*Note chainloading) ---8---8 4.1.2 Load another boot loader to boot unsupported operating systems If you want to boot an unsupported operating system [...] I was going by: 13.3.4 chainloader — Command: chainloader [--force] file Load file as a chain-loader. Like any other file loaded by the filesystem code, it can use the blocklist notation to grab the first sector of the current partition with `+1'. If you specify the option --force, then load file forcibly, whether it has a correct signature or not. This is required when you want to load a defective boot loader, such as SCO UnixWare 7.1 (see SCO UnixWare). http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#chainloader which is far less informative from my POV than the info message you quoted. I did refer to the manual, just the wrong one, apparently :) -Thufir
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 15:30 +0200, Александър Л. Димитров wrote: On 23:51 Tue 17 Jul, Thufir wrote: Oh. Why was the grub documentation not understandable like that? maybe I misread it. thanks for explaining! I guess you missed it. `info grub' says (*Note chainloading) [snip] Note that it's usually better to refer to the info command for more serious documentation about GNU tools in general. RMS and his guys don't exactly seem to like manpages that much that's what they have info for. They have their point, but that's another flame war ;-) I'm happy to leave the info vs man flamewar for someone else, but what I _don't_ like is when you have both man and info, and one of them is very deficient (in grub's case, man). The description is different, less informative, and quite misleading. Instead, is should say either nothing but refer to info pages; or it should be the same as the info pages... would anyone agree? -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 17:00 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: [snip] I get a feel that you are not an average person so your impressions are not valid for them. hahaha!! If you know who this mythical average person is, let me know so we can pay her $$$ to test all of our software!! ;) -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au revolutionary, adj.: Repackaged. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On 7/19/07, Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] Note that it's usually better to refer to the info command for more serious documentation about GNU tools in general. RMS and his guys don't exactly seem to like manpages that much that's what they have info for. They have their point, but that's another flame war ;-) I'm happy to leave the info vs man flamewar for someone else, [...] A curious state of affairs. -Thufir, who doesn't mind a good flamewar from time to time, with discretion -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wednesday 18 July 2007, Thufir wrote: Oh. Why was the grub documentation not understandable like that? maybe I misread it. thanks for explaining! The grub man pages are, ahem, skimpy. IIRC it's all of three paragraphs. The full story is in the info pages, but the way they are written pretty much requires that you do go through all of it in sequence. And they are also written with the assumption that the reader understands the confines a boot loader has to work in. alan -- Optimists say the glass is half full, Pessimists say the glass is half empty, Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Wednesday 18 July 2007 14:18, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 18 July 2007, Thufir wrote: Oh. Why was the grub documentation not understandable like that? maybe I misread it. thanks for explaining! The grub man pages are, ahem, skimpy. IIRC it's all of three paragraphs. The full story is in the info pages, but the way they are written pretty much requires that you do go through all of it in sequence. You can get everything at once and in the same place using the online docs: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html And they are also written with the assumption that the reader understands the confines a boot loader has to work in. This is still true with the online docs of course, since the docs are essentially the same. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
Oh. Why was the grub documentation not understandable like that? maybe I misread it. thanks for explaining! -Thufir -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader
On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 18:12 -0500, »Q« wrote: In news:[EMAIL PROTECTED], Thufir [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've read the GRUB documentation, but still don't understand why the following worked: [snip grub.conf] I would've thought that the chainloader +1 statement would be required -- that's my experience at least. It's only needed if you're booting an unsupported (by grub) OS; no only unsupported OSs, you can chainload anything (bootable) such as another linux distro, which has installed a bootloader into the partition. See how this guy booted 30+ OS's from grub: http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=134856 it tells grub to just hand off to another bootloader. The +1 tells grub to load the first sector of the OS's partition, which is where the other bootloader should be embedded. As long as you're booting Linux kernels, you can just point grub at them without using another bootloader. you mean as long as grub understands the kernel and filesystem, you can tell grub to load the kernel directly, with provided arguments. I think :) cya, -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au Kevin: Dad, the fish got away. Joe Swanson: The hell it did. You get in there and you kick that fish's ass. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
