Re: Support for howmany option in grub2

[address@hidden]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Robert Millan <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 08:04:51PM +0200, address@hidden wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I am using Debian GNU/Linux as my primary system. As a loader I am using 
>> GRUB.
>> Actually I have upgraded to GRUB2. I don't know, if it was feature of 
>> original
>> (legacy) GRUB or it was functionality provided by debian scripts 
>> (update-grub),
>> for generating menu.lst. There was feature - howmany. This option specifies
>> number of kernels, that user wants to have in boot menu. Script, that 
>> modifies
>> menu.lst, use this variable. I like this feature, because I have usually more
>> kernels, but I want to see only last two versions in GRUB menu. I have 
>> created
>> patch, that add support for this to /etc/grub.d/10_linux. I have created this
>> patch against version shipped with Debian (1.97~beta3-1) - I don't know if
>> there are some Debian specific modifications. Also there should be variable
>> GRUB_HOW_MANY propagated from /etc/default/grub (my patch don't do
>> this).
>> Kernel and it's rescue variant is counted as one kernel.
>>
>> I have already reported this bug to Debian BTS:
>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=548600
>
> Does anyone else think we want an option for this?  It seems like "feature
> creep".

IMO this is the responsibility of the distro.  The distro's package
manager is presumably what adds and removes kernels, there's no way
that the grub scripts should be expected to know when past kernels
have been removed.

With more manual-install oriented distros like gentoo, trying to have
grub maintain the kernel list like this would be insane, since the
local admin determines the naming convention.

>
> --
> Robert Millan
>
>  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
>  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
>  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."
>
>
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