On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:20:20 -0400 (EDT), Ben Hutchings wrote: > On Fri, 2010-08-27 at 09:50 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote: >> [...] >> Personally, I think that the requirement to maintain symlinks, if used, >> is implicit in the purpose of the boot loader hook script. >> [...] > > After thinking about this some more and actually trying to implement the > hook scripts, I think I agree. These symlinks are horrible and by > default we should not create them. As a stopgap, boot loader packages > may create and then use the links, but I would much prefer that they > construct a menu of all installed kernel versions, as GRUB and extlinux > do.
Hmm. Well, I agree that the approach taken by grub-legacy and extlinux is more flexible. It allows more than two kernels to be bootable. But boot loaders such as lilo and zipl have historically used symlinks, and the symlink maintenance logic in my generic boot loader hook scripts, http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/kernel/postinst.d/zz-bootloader and http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/kernel/postrm.d/zz-bootloader, isn't really that complex. I'm curious as to why you consider symlinks to be "horrible". For now, on my own systems, I have extracted the symlink maintenance logic from the above generic boot loader hook scripts and have created new hook scripts which I call zy-symlinks. It allows me to use the new boot loader packages with their kernel hook scripts which only invoke the boot loader installer without modifying them. I also have my own generic initramfs hook script which I use with zipl, http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/initramfs/post-update.d/bootloader. (By the way, I like the way you were able to avoid a bashism, namely substring expansion, by using a case statement in lilo's initramfs hook. Very clever!) But Debian clearly needs to do *something* about this problem *somewhere*. -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-s390-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/631424779.459359.1283131904359.javamail.r...@md01.wow.synacor.com
