[NTLUG:Discuss] grub 2

[Robert Pearson]

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Leroy Tennison
<leroy_tennison at prodigy.net> wrote:
>  On 08/02/2010 10:34 AM, Stuart Johnston wrote:
>>
>> On 8/1/2010 4:25 PM, Ralph Green wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sat, 2010-07-31 at 18:22 -0500, Leroy Tennison wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Can someone give me the "Cliff Notes Version"
>>>> of what's different between "Legacy grub" and "grub 2"?  Thanks.
>>>
>>> Leroy,
>>>  It is just version 2 of GRUB.  The configuration language was
>>> drastically changed.  I have not studied it, but I see two changes that
>>> affect me so far.  The new configuration file is much more complex and
>>> less readable.
>>
>> I think whoever came up with the grub2 configuration format must be a fan
>> of Sendmail.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
> Oh really, that good! :-)
>

Yes, but at a price you have no choice except to pay...

My experience---
All my machines dual boot Ubuntu 10.04 and PCLinuxOS 2010. A fresh
install of Ubuntu 10.04 on an existing PCLinuxOS 2010 machine will
install GRUB2 in the MBR. An upgrade of a previous Ubuntu (8.04 to
9.10) to 10.04 will install GRUB. PCLinuxOS 2010 only uses GRUB.
Getting GRUB2 and GRUB to cooperate takes a little doing, and reading.
If one OS is GRUB2 and one is GRUB then whenever the GRUB2 is updated
for any reason the grub.cfg file will have to be edited to allow the
GRUB OS to boot.
In particular the case of PCLinuxOS 2010 which uses links to point to
the boot image. GRUB2 does not follow links.
One day I am going to sit down and read through GRUB2 and solve this
problem. I did read briefly about the work-a-round for the links issue
but it took me into more areas that I know very little about nor do I
care to know more about. The damn thing should just figure it out and
work. If I can figure it out some program should be able to. I am not
impressed at al with the GRUB/GRUB2 script that reads
menu.lst/grub.cfg and updates it. It works fine if you never modify
those files. I modify all of mine. GRUB/GRUB2 seems particularly
retarded about the config files menu.lst/grug.cfg. Maybe I'm missing
something.
GRUB2 also starts partition numbering with partition 1 instead of 0 so
you have to keep an eye out for that. In my experience here GRUB2 gets
confused about what partition GRUB uses on PCLinuxOS 2010 as the boot
partition and I have to change it back every time grub.cfg is rebuilt.
If you are running all GRUB2 it is probably fine.