Re: [PATCH] Increase flexibility of kernel naming, allow non-versioned kernels.

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

On 29.04.2012 22:07, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> On 04/29/2012 12:28 PM, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
>> On 29.04.2012 06:46, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>>> I am relaying a patch by Robin Johnson, one of the core infrastructure
>>> staff at Gentoo Linux. In the process of building some Gentoo servers
>>> utilizing GRUB 2, he has made some changes to 10_linux that should make
>>> grub-mkconfig "out of the box" for additional users.
>>>
>>> I did a little work to clean up the indentation and wrote a proper
>>> changelog. Credit should go to him.
>>>
>>> Here is his description:
>>>
>>> Increase flexibility of kernel naming, allow non-versioned kernels.
>>> The block that tried to find the kernels was getting unweidly long, as
>>> was not
>>> easily customizable by users or distributors. Refactor to introduce a new
>>> variable, GRUB_KERNEL_GLOB, that allows complete control over the naming
>>> used
>>> to search for kernel binaries.
>> It was well structured and its length is solely due to distros using
>> multiple names. We can't make it shorter and this patch surely didn't.
> Right. I think the intent is not to make it "shorter", just slightly
> easier to manage.
Well it didn't. So I'll prefer these tossing around to be kept out and
I'll skip discussing them in the rest of this mail.
As for the goal of moving this part out of the script altogether and
making it distro-specific config it's an impossible goal since upstream
version has to be functional on common distros unless distros go out of
their way to make it difficult.
>> I don't consider that being able to customise the kernel naming is of
>> any advantage. Saying otherwise is like saying "let's make location of
>> /etc/passwd customizable". Some objects just have to be named as given.
> I do not follow that analogy. In contrast to /etc/passwd, the only
> program on the system that actually needs to know the path to the kernel
> is the boot loader. So long as the boot loader can find it, you can put
> the kernel anywhere, and name it anything.
Even if it was though, it still creates problem for no benefit.
Also Super GRUB Disk and bootinfoscript both need to find the kernels
and initrds.
>> I don't see any advantage to renaming kernels, especially given that you
>> can change versionstring as you see fit.
> I agree that there is no "advantage" to these various naming schemes; it
> is just something that people have done over the years due to the lack
> of a standard back in the day.
>
> We have many users on Gentoo who compile their kernel and then manually
> copy the resulting bzImage to /boot with whatever name they please. This
> patch is an attempt GRUB compatible with that reality.
>
> I am respectfully asking you to merge it to save myself some work in
> re-basing a disto-specific patch, or my users from having to change
> their behavior due to a somewhat rigid boot loader configuration file
> generator.
I fail to see how "configure your uncommon naming scheme into a config
file" is less annoying than "stick to a common naming scheme". Both
require informing users and both require user action. Sticking to
standard naming scheme has obvious benefits of standardising the
filenames which is especially interesting for tools like os-prober,
bootinfoscript, Super GRUB Disk.
>>> Add 'bzImage' to the list of default names to support more distribution
>>> naming
>>> variants.
>>>
>>> Adjust the default set of globs to look for unversioned kernels before
>>> versioned kernels, to find symlinked kernel names.
>> Additionally empty version would probably result in some quirks not
>> addressed in this patch.
> Could you expand on this? I do not have the knowledge you do in this
> area, so I cannot predict all possible problems.
Off the top of my head: it's used for title, id, initrd name and
sorting. All those would have to be adjusted.
> Thanks.
>
>
>
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-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko

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