Several ideas about grub2.

[Dmitry Ilyin]

1. Implementation of some progress bar for file reading

Loading files from slow flash or network can sometimes take up to several 
minutes (Linux initramfs could 
be about 100Mb). And i'm thinking about some progress meter for file loading. 
It could be print dot per 
megabyte, percent or 34/76Mb style or like this |#######------------|.
Looks like it should be build into grub_disk_read procedue in kern/disk.c or 
grub_file_read in kern/file.c
Maybe you could give me some hints about best way to do this.

2. Basic text editor

Is it possible to make basic text editor as grub2 module. I'm looking at "ed" 
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html It will be very usefull to edit text 
files (grub.cfg for example) 
without booting os. Or there is no write support in filesystem drivers? Maybe 
hex editor?

3. Installing on loop devices

grub-install fails to work on loop devices. Partition detection doesn't work on 
loop devices, but you can 
use kpartx. For example we have /dev/loop0, using fdisk we create 2 partitions 
on this image, kpartx -a 
/dev/loop0 will map partitions to /dev/mapper/loop0p1 and /dev/mapper/loop0p2 
which you can format and 
mount, but grub-install will fail (there is no bios drives for them?).
No kernel partition detecion for loop devices is serious problem. Why kernel 
cannot create /dev/loop0p1 
and /dev/loop0p2 like with real hdds? FreeBSD's md's doesn't have this problem 
and work like normal disks 
with partitions. But this is not related to grub.
What is the best way to fix installing on loop devices? Fixing grub-probe or 
grub-install to not using 
grub-probe when it cannot work and hardcode (hd0) prefix for loop devices?

Using grub-mkimage and grub-setup manually works.