Re: partition layouts - "root"

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Apr 6, 2005, at 10:43 AM, Antoine Terrienne wrote:

> Selon Hollis Blanchard <address@hidden>:
> > Okuji? Hmm, what about "device"?
> >         title foo
> >                 set device=bar
> >                 multiboot /kernel root=baz
> >
> > I would like to avoid this:
> >         title foo
> >                 set root=bar
> >                 multiboot /kernel root=baz
> > ... because here we are specifying two unrelated "root" variables.
>
> The first root variable is a Grub variable but se second is a Linux 
> kernel
> argument. I think changing the Grub notation just beacause it can 
> confuse with
> the kernel argument is not that good. Linux uses "root" but we cannot 
> garanteed
> that a another system (*BSD, L4, Mac OS, AmigaOS, etc...) will not use 
> "device".

Agreed. However, we know right now that several OSs do this, and that 
by far covers the greatest number of GRUB users.

> So whaterver the name we use for the Grub variables/function we cannot 
> be sure
> it will not be used by the system we boot.
> I think keeping "root" is a good choice as the user is supposed to 
> know the
> arguments of the kernel he wants to boot and how to invoque it.

It's clear to you and I, but seeing "root=foo" "root=bar" is obviously 
not very friendly and in general should be avoided.

-Hollis