[Sussex] Grub

[Steve Williams]

On Mon, 2005-05-16 at 19:05 +0100, Simon Huggins wrote:
> Hiya,
> 
> On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 09:53:27AM +0100, Stephen Williams wrote:
> > I've got a spare box to try it on that Ubuntu couldn't cope with -
> > SCSI and HPT IDE-RAID controllers with 1x SCSI and 4x IDE drives
> > (gotta put 'em somewhere) - Ubuntu's default grub install didn't hack
> > it.
> 
> I expect your /boot/grub/device.map wasn't correct if you still care.  I
> only mention it as it may bite you whatever you end up running as I'm
> not sure how changing distribution will help if grub (and therefore
> grub-install) is of the same version though.

Quite possibly. However, I am familiar enough with Gentoo to know that I
can set it up on this machine without too much trouble. However, I've
been looking for a binary distro that will pretty much what I can do
with Gentoo but without the endless compile time. Sadly I've not found
one yet.

The problem is that if a binary distro install doesn't happen in a
fairly straightforward and error-free way, there's not much point using
it compared to Gentoo. The time taken to configure Ubuntu or Arch or
SomeotherLinux may well begin to approach that of Gentoo if I'm
constantly having to battle my way through a recalcitrant install that
whinges about package dependencies, or won't boot because grub.conf or
device.map has been set up incorrectly. I might as well stick to Gentoo.
I agree that on conventional PCs (one ide disk, processor etc.) Ubuntu
or Arch may well be a snap to install, but if I'm going to be converted
to one of these binary distros the install has got to cope with odd
configurations such as my spare box.

I'll keep looking, but for now I'll stick with Gentoo. It feels like an
old shoe now. I have it running on my desktop, notebook and server, and
they're all very solid and reliable despite some fairly cutting edge
stuff. My notebook (P4 1.8 Dell Precision M50) runs god knows how many
services yet it still zips along pretty reasonably.

Steve W.

>