Re: Breaking out of menu on "live disk", repairing grub

[Jordan Uggla]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Felix Miata <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 2013-03-25 10:48 (GMT-0700) Jordan Uggla composed:
>
>
>> if you did find a liveCD/DVD which used
>> grub legacy as its bootloader you would only be able to use it to
>> install a boot sector for a partition with an already existing and
>> properly setup /boot/grub/.
>
>
> I have a pile of (live) Knoppix OM used and usable for installing Grub
> Legacy to a wiped or previously virgin HD in a BIOS system, all without
> looking up any docs WRT how to go about it. First I create partitions and
> filesystems, then I install Grub, and only then to I proceed to install any
> operating systems.

Yes, but on those virgin systems you needed to boot a GNU/Linux
system, mount the partition you created for /boot/grub/, and either
run grub-install or manually create a /boot/grub/ directory and
manually copy the needed images to that directory, before entering a
grub shell and running multiple commands to install a boot sector. You
could not install grub by "Breaking out of menu on "live disk"", and I
would argue that as you needed to worry about "find
/boot/grub/stage_2" "not giving the result you expected" (meaning you
had to know enough to know what to expect, you couldn't trust the
tools to just do the right thing) and make sure that your
/boot/grub/device.map was correct, installing grub legacy was more
complicated than installing grub2 is. grub-install is not a
particularly complicated command.

>
>
>>> any event, there's no need for chroot when using live media containing
>>> executable Grub Legacy, or if as $SUBJECT breaking to a Grub prompt from
>>> a
>
>
>> Many people seem to grossly misremember what grub legacy actually did,
>> and did-not, do.
>
>
> What I very well remember is it does everything I need it to do, and without
> repeatedly warning me about deprecated cmdline arguments or stuffing dire
> warnings about consequences of not installing to MBR in my face. And any

Times change. Kernel arguments that were never really kernel arguments
in the first place get deprecated (though it's still supported, just
with a warning). Warnings about unreliable configurations are good
(and the configuration was just as unreliable with grub legacy, just
no warning).

> time I'm somehow faced with grub> instead of an expected menu at boot time,
> I already know what commands do what in order to proceed, because they
> weren't superceded during a massive code rewrite.

Times change. Some of your knowledge of how GNU/Linux worked a decade
ago no longer applies (even less of decade old knowledge of other IT
sectors likely applies). I don't think it's a compelling argument to
keep things the same when a new method, which is much simpler, can be
devised instead.

-- 
Jordan Uggla (Jordan_U on irc.freenode.net)