Re: [gentoo-user] Gnome3 haters: you should try the new cinnamon-1.6.1
On 10/15/2012 08:38 AM, Michael Hampicke wrote: > Thanks for the heads-up, last time I looked nemo was not in portage. I > use gnome3.6 and dislike the new nautilus - still have version 3.4 of it > installed. But now I can switch to nemo. GNOME 3.6 landed? I know it was released, but I still don't have it on my system... I'm assuming that it requires more unmasking and modification of the /etc/portage/* stuff? (Incidentally, when will it become "stable" as a whole? I realize I must be one of the very few dissenters to the subject here, but jhbuild never works for me, and GNOME is the only thing that I don't fully have that I want. That, and I want to check out the GNOME boxes feature...) --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Is my system (really) using nptl
On 10/14/2012 03:19 PM, Florian Philipp wrote: > Huh? Are there other libcs that do it differently? I can't imagine any > alternative (except of the sbrk function from the bad old days). Newlib at least uses sbrk, presumably because only requiring that, as opposed to requiring a fully functional memory mapping interface which may not exist on whatever it is ported to, is far easier. I suspect that other smaller and/or embedded-focused libraries that don't assume a kernel such as Linux or BSD probably also still use sbrk. --- MIke -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Should I install pulseaudio to solve my phonon audio problems?
On 08/20/2012 02:19 AM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: > And the players output to PulseAudio directly or through the ALSA > emulation? In GNOME 2 you could configure GStreamer (which both > Rhythmbox and Banshee use) to use PulseAudio as default sink, or using > ALSA; but it PA is running, newer versions will automagically detect > it and use it [1]. I use GNOME 3 and PA is mandatory, so I don't > remember exactly how it was. I just checked my GStreamer settings, and they are correct; here is a transcript of the configuration window for gstreamer-properties: == Default Output Plugin: PulseAudio Sound Server Device: Internal Audio Analog Surround 5.1 Pipeline: [can't read, runs off the screen and window won't resize] == The Input section is blank, and I never use the input so it doesn't matter. I still have to do the scroll-up/scroll-down trickery every time I start a stream in Banshee or Rhythmbox. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Should I install pulseaudio to solve my phonon audio problems?
On 08/20/2012 02:19 AM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: > On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 1:05 AM, Michael Trausch wrote: >> Tested and verified w/ at least Rhythmbox and Banshee. Have offered a bounty >> for years for anyone who fox the bug. There are open, confirmed bugs in (at >> least) Launchpad going back quite some time, too. Happens regardless of >> hardware, but have had it happen on SB Live and several onboards. > > Do you have links to the bugs? This is an incomplete list of reports from Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/406582 I reported that one, looks as though at least 5 others have the same problem and have found that bug. I have had this issue before as well: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/445849 (affects 91 people) This one looks to be about the same, though lacking enough information to confirm for sure: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/693039 Another: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/677067 (4 users) And yet another: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/494099 (17 users) Aside from my bug, I was able to find the other ones in just a couple of minutes with Google. There are pointers to Launchpad from other places, too, such as the Ubuntu Forums, Gentoo and Arch wiki and forums and so forth. >> The only time I ever got 5.1 working was with straight ALSA, but then I >> don't get upmixing. >> >> As a result, I have been using netradio. No closing and opening of the audio >> device. >> >> Also, canberra (the sound notification library) seems to actually output >> sound correctly, but I think it holds the device open the whole time. > > I have libcanberra compiled with PA support, so I can use it with > other sound sources at the same time. > >> PA isn't changing the configuration back to stereo. It shows 5.1, but media >> players only output to two speakers until I open the PA control and jump >> from 5.1 to 4.1 and back. > > And the players output to PulseAudio directly or through the ALSA > emulation? In GNOME 2 you could configure GStreamer (which both > Rhythmbox and Banshee use) to use PulseAudio as default sink, or using > ALSA; but it PA is running, newer versions will automagically detect > it and use it [1]. I use GNOME 3 and PA is mandatory, so I don't > remember exactly how it was. I couldn't even tell you. I stopped actively trying to get PulseAudio to work correctly with 6 channel output about two years ago or so, I got sick and tired of people telling me my problem was imaginary. I work around it by using Internet radio, since that way I only have to have the PA control panel program open _once_, instead of every time I change songs. Rhythmbox and Banshee have improved in the past few years in that they no longer close the audio device when playing songs in sequential order. However, that isn't foolproof either. It's been bugging me again lately, but while I have the motivation to investigate and attempt to find a way to fix this stupidly infuriating problem, I don't have the time. Nobody who knows what they're doing with the PA source code seems to believe that this is truly an issue, so it's probably never going to be fixed. > Sorry for my curiosity, but it sounds really weird: I have heard a lot > about PA problems, but nothing like this. > > [1] http://arunraghavan.net/2012/02/gentoo-pulseaudio-alsa-update/ > I remember that post. Nothing changed, though, at least for me. -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Are those "green" drives any good?
On 05/09/2012 07:47 AM, Tanstaafl wrote: > As long as you don't use them in any kind of RAID setup you they should > be fine. > > The biggest difference between them and 'enterprise' class drives is the > enterprise class drives are designed for multi-drive RAID setups... you > don't want drives to spin down independently when working in a RAID > setup... AFAIK, the only technical difference between a consumer drive and an enterprise one is that the enterprise one doesn't tell lies. Or at least, it isn't supposed to. Consumer drives will acknowledge writes before they have hit the platter, even if the cache is disabled on the drive (and some consumer drives do not even allow the cache to be disabled). The only scenario this seriously guards against is unexpected power loss, where the drive has told the OS that the data has been written to disk, but it is somewhere in-between (e.g., on cache, but not on the platter) and then the power is disconnected from the unit (specifically, the drive itself). Even an unexpected reboot from the computer won't affect this, unless the computer removes power to the device during early boot (and on x86 systems, that is a virtual impossibility). --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How can i use GRUB to boot my windows?
On 03/09/2012 07:40 AM, 赵佳晖 wrote: > grub.conf: > default 0 > timeout 30 > splashimage=(hd0,7)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz > > title Gentoo > root(hd0,7) > kernel /boot/kernel-3.2.1-gentoo-r2 > root=/dev/sda8 > > title Windows 7 > rootnoverify hd(0,0) > makeactive > chainloader +1 The error is present right there. Compare your root and rootnoverify lines. Your rootnoverify line should read "rootnoverify (hd0,0)". --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] rsync from ext3 to vfat?
On 02/17/2012 05:11 PM, Manuel McLure wrote: > Add "FAT considers two filenames that are the same except for case as > the same filename" to that list. NTFS has the same limitation. I had forgotten about that. FAT is always case-sensitive. While it is possible to change the rules slightly for NTFS, there are serious repurcussions if you do. NTFS supports the notion of a POSIX "namespace", but if you use it and have multiple files that match according to the Win32 rules, one of them will be inaccessible to applications that use the Win32 namespace. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] rsync from ext3 to vfat?
On 02/17/2012 03:12 PM, Mark Knecht wrote: >I'm looking for what rsync options I can use to copy existing files > on an ext3 file system to an external eSATA drive formatted with vfat. > I think I want to match only the name, creation date & file size. The > eSATA drive needs to be vfat due to limitations of the audio/video > device it will be plugged into. rsync works just fine with any normal set of options when using any sort of FAT as a destination. There are, of course, a couple of gotchas: - FAT has limitations on file sizes. - FAT cannot store permissions or ACLs - FAT does not support extended attributes Other than that, though, you should be good. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] (A nice illustration of Gentoo)
On 02/15/2012 11:07 PM, Pandu Poluan wrote: > Eh? You don't need to duck from me... I am one of those guys who are > against initrd/initramfs :-P I hate extra cogs in the system. Simpler is better! > That said, anyone read his description of other distros? Somehow I got > the vibes that Gentoo's is the one where he didn't explicitly point out > something bad against; only a lamentation that he really don't want to > spend too much time compiling everything. That seems to be the general gist, yes. > The blog writer's closing paragraph is very poetic it hurts; for I'm > about to leave my beloved Gentoo servers behind... I am actually considering using Gentoo on servers, myself. I've been using it on my desktop for a while. The only thing that I am really concerned about is that if I do use it on servers, I'm going to have to find some way to gain better control over the local Portage tree. What I really ought to be doing is looking at Portage way closer than I do as an everyday user. I just want to be absolutely sure that I don't break anything on a server when I update. But since I have recently learned about and started learning Puppet, I think I might have a much easier time mitigating the risks of change by having an environment that is defined not in terms of the underlying distribution, but in terms of the requirements of the servers. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] In TTYs, pinguins remain
On 02/15/2012 10:49 AM, LK wrote: > In TTYs, the penguins you see on top of the > booting process remain. Then in less, i cannot scroll > upwards, which sucks using man and like that. You can eliminate them by switching VTs after boot, or as Nikos said, you are also able to eliminate them entirely by disabling the boot-up logo. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Switching to clocksource tsc: takes AGES on boot
On 02/15/2012 09:52 AM, LK wrote: >> Are there any firmware-related messages in your dmesg? > Oh yes: http://pastebin.com/b95y3GaH > Look at the area from 1.576863 to 62.228490, includes the 60s > freeze from switching to clocksource tsc. > > Does the problem lay in my AMD gpu (hd6xxx) ? It is definitely a problem with the kernel configuration. Can you send: - Kernel .config - Output of "tree /lib/firmware" If that's too big to post to the list, put it up on gist or something and just paste a link... We'll figure out what's going on and speed up that boot time! :) --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] (A nice illustration of Gentoo)
On 02/15/2012 05:58 AM, Pandu Poluan wrote: > Found this blogpost serendipitously: > > http://mark.orbum.net/2011/11/15/the-pan-pipes-of-gentoo-linux-always-at-the-source/ > > so, are we brothers? :-) > But, but... you don't _need_ an initrd to have root on LVM! You just need LVM built-in and GRUB 2! *ducks* --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/15/2012 07:19 AM, Tanstaafl wrote: > What I would prefer is a detailed yet simple 'How-To' aimed at the > average user rather than the hacker (in other words, don't assume I can > read code/scripts and understand all or even some of what is happening) > or write my own scripts, etc... > > Also, I'd prefer this How-To be aimed at current users of GRUB Legacy, > meaning, 'This is how Legacy did it, but now GRUB2 does it this way, and > for this reason'... > > And last, a lot of examples of comparisons of GRUB-Legacy/GRUB2 config > files for different types of systems (obviously, these should include > all of the most common systems, then more esoteric ones can be added by > those using them)... I can do this, but it's going to take me a day or two. I have to refresh myself on GRUB Legacy, first. It has been a (long) while since I've used it. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] older machine and video packages
On 02/14/2012 08:37 PM, Dale wrote: > On my older x86 machine, I get this when trying to update: > > WARNING: One or more updates have been skipped due to a dependency conflict: > > x11-base/xorg-server:0 > > (x11-base/xorg-server-1.11.2-r2::gentoo, ebuild scheduled for merge) > conflicts with > (x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-173.14.31::gentoo, installed) The only way that you'll be able to resolve this is to remove the nvidia-drivers package and switch to Nouveau. If Nouveau works with your graphics chipset, it is win-win, since that driver is maintained in the kernel tree. Otherwise, keep checking to see if it becomes supported. You can work around it by masking ">x11-base/xorg-server-1.11", but that will (eventually) begin to cause problems as the rest of the system evolves around it. Is 173.14.xx the last driver that supports your card, or will any newer one support your card? Which chipset is your card using? --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Switching to clocksource tsc: takes AGES on boot
(Sorry that the threading is broken, I was looking at this in the list archive and don't still have the mails from earlier, which I probably mass-deleted...) This sounds suspiciously like an error loading firmware, which can happen when you have a video adapter or WiFi adapter that needs firmware, but doesn't have have the right one. Are there any firmware-related messages in your dmesg? --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/14/2012 06:47 PM, Paul Hartman wrote: > FYI Gentoo's GRUB 0.9x in portage has supported GPT for at least 2 or > 3 years now. I'm using it with GPT partitions and my systems all boot. > :) Not all distributions do. I have been running GPT for quite some time, while I only switched to Gentoo (relatively) recently. That said, I also stopped using GRUB 0.9x when GRUB 1.9x became stable enough to deploy widely, since I was quite tired of fixing broken GRUB setups (almost never my own, mind). Since the so-called "mainstream" distributions switched to GRUB 2, I take a lot less calls for "my system stopped booting". Now most of those are Windows breakages. :-) --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/14/2012 03:57 PM, LK wrote: > First, why do we need that much code? First, are you talking about source or binary code? If you're talking about source code, then realize this: Not all that source is even compiled on your system. As to the source that *is* compiled on your system, there is: - A tiny boot loader (max 448 bytes of binary code), which loads the GRUB core. - The GRUB bootloader core, which is the GRUB "main" program and which knows how to talk to different types of modules. - The modules themselves. There are modules for: - disk types, including PATA, SCSI, USB, Device Manager, DMRAID, LVM, LUKS. - filesystems, including ext2, btrfs, reiserfs. - partition types, including MBR, GPT, Apple Partition Map. Each type of module implements exactly the same interface; the core only needs to know how to talk to that type of module to communicate with all modules that implement that interface. The modular design makes it easier to (a) support new platforms, boot protocols, bus types, partition types, and filesystems, and (b) ensure that only code necessary for a particular type of thing is loaded. This design is _necessary_ to deal with today's world. Your computer is almost certainly setup differently from mine; I require the use of a GPT module on my system, for example. You may not, if you still use MBR. In fact, if you're using GRUB Legacy, then you almost certainly do not require the GPT module on your system (at least not right now). GRUB 1 assumed BIOS, and assumed MBR. GRUB 2 assumes neither. And for that matter, supports encrypted disks and logical volume management (both relatively common especially in servers) without third-party patches. For the _most_ part, GRUB 2 is simply designed to handle today's world. It also includes features that distributions developed (independently, and incompatibly between each other) for GRUB 1 as patches or add-on programs. > If we have less then we dont > have to divide into modules. Not true; modules are used in GRUB not because it's too big (once in 32-bit protected mode, all memory becomes available), but to help organize the system better. This simplifies the design. If I want to, I can create a new type of filesystem, and then all I have to do to make sure that GRUB 2 supports it is to write a module that knows how to talk to it. Nothing changes anywhere else in GRUB. If I create a new type of firmware, I simply write code that knows how to talk to that type of firmware, and I am done. Now GRUB 2 still runs on my PC, but also runs on my new custom computer. And that code for my custom computer never gets loaded on your computer, because your computer never uses it. Modules in this case are a structural (design) thing to simplify the design of the program, not to make it possible to fit in memory or anything like that. > Second, it does not translate into complex but rather into too much, > and whenever it is too much than needed, its hard to understand > and THUS complex. Not the other way. Having spent the last 30 minutes looking at the GRUB 2 sources from the bzr repo, I can tell you that it's very easy to understand; once you understand how the FS interface works, it's very easy to learn how one FS module reads a filesystem. And you then gain the understanding required to write a new, independent module. Think of GRUB 2's modules as "subprograms" if you must, which implement a particular (and identical) API for each instance. If you're interested, I can detail a history for you, and explain why GRUB 1 was discontinued and why the whole thing was restructured in detail. I can't right now, as I am about to get on a conference call, but I can certainly do so later tonight or tomorrow if you want. What it boils down to, though is that GRUB 1 made assumptions (that every computer used BIOS, that every computer used MBR partition tables) which no longer hold true. Because they no longer hold true, it was necessary to push that functionality into modules with a standardized interface, in order to support EFI and GPT. That also enabled GRUB 2 to be able to run on more than one platform, since it no longer made assumptions that were specific to consumer-class PC systems. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Alternative to firefox?
On 02/14/2012 03:41 PM, Grant wrote: > Has anyone found a GUI alternative to firefox they like that's in > portage? Something minimal preferably but with flash support? I've used Chromium in the past. It supports the same plugins that Firefox does. There is also Epiphany, the GNOME browser, which I am relatively certain handles the same types of plugins that FF and Chromium do. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub2
On 02/14/2012 02:53 PM, LK wrote:
> I meant in GRUB2. I have another box with linux mint using GRUB2, and
> splash backgrounds in GRUB / lowlevel menus or anywhere ("branding")
> reminds me of commercialism like Apple putting their logo onto every
> product. (They are good, tho, the apple logo is stylish. Now imagine
> the iPhone would have a rectangle-like icon with bad proportions)
Comment out the GRUB_BACKGROUND line in /etc/default/grub.
You can also comment out the GRUB_GFXMODE line in order to use plain VGA
text mode.
--- Mikje
--
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
--- Carveth Read, “Logic”
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub2
On 02/14/2012 02:59 PM, Michael Cook wrote: > You can't edit /etc/default/grub to customize how grub-mkconfig > generates grub.cfg. Mint probably has update-grub like Ubuntu does which > just allows you to use that command instead of grub2-mkconfig -o > /boot/grub/grub.cfg grub-mkconfig (grub2-mkconfig in Gentoo) uses the scripts in /etc/grub.d to generate the configuration file. It runs them in sequential order. You can add, remove or rename the scripts in order to have them do what you want. You can also edit the 40_custom file, which will insert its contents verbatim (sans its shebang and exec lines) into the configuration file when grub(2)-mkconfig is run. For the paranoid, you can put a failsafe boot option in that file. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/14/2012 02:29 PM, Andrea Conti wrote: > Re grub2: as long as grub0 works, I really don't care if grub2 is > better, cleaner, shinier, more modern or anything else. > > I don't need a freakin' whole OS to boot linux, and having a > configuration that is so convoluted that it *has to* be generated by > running a set of scripts makes no sense at all. I thought the days of m4 > and sendmail.cf were over a long time ago... Well, it's a good thing that GRUB 2 is just a bootloader, then. :-) And again, nobody needs the tools to configure it; they are simply standardized from what various distributions developed for GRUB Legacy, but was incompatible from one distribution to the next. > I am sure grub2 can be made to work, but for a piece of software as > vital as a boot loader, that level of complexity in my opinion is > totally unreasonable and impossible to justify. How about "It Just Works". Seriously. It is a better designed system with most of its functionality pushed into modules. It is portable to more than just x86, as I've already mentioned before, and during _that_ whole process, the quality of the code increased significantly. It is more robust, and from the POV of a user, maintainer, or packager it is *much* simpler. When supporting GRUB Legacy, it's almost a necessity to know which distribution the user installed it with. Why? Because all of them are different! That is no longer the case with GRUB 2. I'm not sure how that translates to being more complex. If you are averse to change, just say so and be done with it. Is it different? Oh, yes, absolutely. It couldn't be better if it were the same, could it? ;-) --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/14/2012 02:04 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
> A detailed elaboration would be nice.
>
> A contrasting migration guide, complete with the how's, where's and
> why's would be awesome. (Once one's invested in understanding a tool,
> a 1-2-3-itsmagic walkthrough is very discomforting.)
While there are many different points that differ between the two, the
biggest are:
- Supported upstream.
- Can boot from GPT as well as MBR partition table types, regardless
of whether EFI is in use or not. Also supports the use of Apple
Partition Maps, BSD disk labels, and others through modules.
- Doesn't require patching to deal with modern situations; you can
download upstream source code and it will work, unlike GRUB Legacy.
- Can boot from virtually any filesystem you would want to use,
not just a small handful of them; includes ISO9660, UDF, Reiser,
btrfs, NTFS, ZFS, HFS and HFS+, among others.
- Supports selecting filesystems by UUID without distribution-specific
patches, for filesystem types that can be identified by UUIDs.
- Can be booted from BIOS or EFI on the PC, and no longer depends on
the existence of any particular type of firmware (no more probing
for BIOS boot drives, which can fail on many different systems).
This means that GRUB 2 doesn't have to be hand-installed on systems
GRUB Legacy couldn't figure out for whatever reason. And yes, there
were a good number of them, where LILO was the only choice due to
its use of block maps (another not-so-robust booting mechanism which
required significantly more maintenance than GRUB does).
- Can boot Linux, the BSDs, any Multiboot or Multiboot2 kernel, and
EFI applications.
- Supports El Torito natively on platforms that use it (e.g., BIOS)
to boot optical media, meaning that it is possible to use GRUB 2
boot anything that can be burned to an optical disk. This makes it
easier to work with testing environments burned to any form of
optical disk.
- Better code quality than GRUB Legacy, with more loose coupling
between components and making it possible for people to more easily
write GRUB modules than with GRUB Legacy. Additionally, nearly
anything that would have been a patch to GRUB Legacy can be written
as a module in GRUB 2, making it easier to share modules between
distributions. This also means it is *much* more portable.
- Can be run as an EFI application on modern systems using EFI, such
as Intel-based Macintosh systems, without requiring BIOS emulation.
It can also emulate an EFI environment for things which require it
in order to boot.
- Eliminates dependence on BIOS in order to determine available boot
devices. This empowers GRUB to be able to boot without firmware
assistance from many different mediums, including USB and PXE, even
without firmware support.
- Supports booting from Linux device-mapper and LVM2 configurations,
as well as encrypted partitions.
- Supports kernels > 16 MB in size without patches. This can happen
when you compile a purely static kernel and support a great deal of
options without putting them into modules. Not common, but does
happen.
Additionally, GRUB 2 standardizes (upstream) a number of things which
were developed independently by various distributions as patches for
GRUB Legacy. Gentoo's legacy GRUB is heavily patched,
The configuration file isn't terribly difficult to figure out, either;
as I've mentioned before, there is *absolutely* no requirement to use
grub2-mkconfig, it just makes life easier.
For example, here is the entry that boots my current kernel:
menuentry 'GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.5-gentoo' --class gnu-linux --class
gnu --class os {
load_video
insmod gzio
insmod part_gpt
insmod ext2
set root='(/dev/sda,gpt2)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
3820beff-80b5-4d05-b989-3ab9265bc2a3
echo'Loading Linux 3.2.5-gentoo ...'
linux /vmlinuz-3.2.5-gentoo root=/dev/sda3 ro
Adding an entry is no more complex as it was before; copy, paste, edit.
Simple. No commands necessary since GRUB reads the grub.cfg file from
the filesystem when it loads, and doesn't embed it anywhere.
(And yes, I have a separate /boot; reason being is that it is mounted -o
sync, that is, when it is mounted at all. At least on my primary
desktop system; /boot is actually on the root fs on most of my systems.)
There will be a day when GRUB Legacy won't be supported by distributions
at all. There's no need to maintain multiple bootloaders (and upstream
refuses to do so, reasonably), and many of the tricks, patches and
workarounds of old are no longer necessary with GRUB 2.
Also, it becomes possible to use the Linux kernel's long-existing
installation hook to automatically update the boot list when you "make
install modules_install" a new kernel image, making kernel installation
literally a si
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/14/2012 01:40 PM, LK wrote: > > On 120214, at 19:24, m...@trausch.us wrote: >> On 02/14/2012 01:08 PM, LK wrote: >>> BTW: So is grub0 still supported by gentoo / maintained by themselves? >>> Does that matter(it is boot, no network stuff) ? >> GRUB Legacy (that is, GRUB versions 0.xx) is still the default in >> Gentoo. In order to use GRUB 2 (that is, GRUB version 1.99 in Portage) >> you'll have to unmask sys-boot/grub-1.99-r2. > > The thing is, IMO grub0 is better / simplier. > I disagree. GRUB Legacy is not the same in any two distributions because every single distribution patches it differently because it hasn't had core functionality updated in a very long time. It's pretty much abandoned by upstream, as well. I'm not saying that it is bad, but I _am_ saying that it has outlived its usefulness. GRUB 2 follows an entirely different architecture. >> GRUB 2 is significantly more convenient and powerful and does not >> require the nearly 80 patches that the legacy version does in order to >> work properly on the system. It can also manage its own configuration >> file using its new grub-mkconfig (grub2-mkconfig in Gentoo) program, >> which supports the use of scripts/programs to generate grub.cfg entries >> for booting the kernel and other operating systems. > > As you read above, I prefer grub0.* because it has config files, not > commands which will automize it. For ubuntu I can understand that, > but configuring boot is too simple to require automisation. When > now automatic script fails, is there a way to do it by hand? Ubuntu > disallows editing it by hand. Now I am confused by the 80 patches > for legacy grub =( afaik. Nothing requires you to use the scripts; they simply provide assistance. If you want, you can absolutely manage your configuration file by hand. Why you'd want to is beyond me, but it's a choice that you do in fact have. I use them, because it simplifies my life and it means that I can easily manage systems' boot loader configuration without having to resort to forcing all the environments to use the same filenames and layouts---compile kernel, install kernel, run "grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg". Simple. I have too many systems to worry about messing with configuration files by hand! If you need to customize the process, you can add, remove, and re-order scripts in /etc/grub.d. They are named like xx-name, where xx is a number from 00 to 99. Of course, if for some reason one of those scripts did break, you can still boot your system by hand as you were able to do in GRUB Legacy, with the added bonus that the GRUB 2 environment is much easier to work in. It also supports partition schemes other than MBR, which is useful since I use GPT on my systems. It can also natively boot 64-bit kernels via Multiboot. > PS: If you know how to get rid of any background image, could you > say how? For GRUB Legacy? I'm sorry, but it has been long enough since I have used it that I couldn't help; there is a configuration directive in the menu.lst file that you should be able to delete that will get rid of it, but I don't remember what it was called. > THX + TIA. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] grub vs grub 2
On 02/14/2012 01:08 PM, LK wrote: > BTW: So is grub0 still supported by gentoo / maintained by themselves? > Does that matter(it is boot, no network stuff) ? GRUB Legacy (that is, GRUB versions 0.xx) is still the default in Gentoo. In order to use GRUB 2 (that is, GRUB version 1.99 in Portage) you'll have to unmask sys-boot/grub-1.99-r2. GRUB 2 is significantly more convenient and powerful and does not require the nearly 80 patches that the legacy version does in order to work properly on the system. It can also manage its own configuration file using its new grub-mkconfig (grub2-mkconfig in Gentoo) program, which supports the use of scripts/programs to generate grub.cfg entries for booting the kernel and other operating systems. However (at least on my primary workstation) Portage now always removes grub:0 at depclean time, and always pulls it back in at "emerge -DNua world" time. It's harmless, though inefficient, and I haven't figured out how to prevent it from happening. I have even masked grub:0 and it still pulls it in and installs it, despite being masked. --- Mike -- A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense. --- Carveth Read, “Logic” signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
