[Sussex] Grub (becoming another gentoo thread...)

[Steve Williams]

On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 18:35 +0100, Simon Huggins wrote:
> Hi LUG,
> 
> On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 06:25:14PM +0100, Steve Williams wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 17:18 +0100, Simon Huggins wrote:
> > > Sure but I'm more interested in the claims about grub than rehashing
> > > what he and you have said before...
> > I never claimed there's anything wrong with grub - it's fine on my
> > Gentoo installs. However, the default Ubuntu grub setup couldn't cope
> > with my spare box configuration. I'm sure that some configuration work
> > would sort the problem, but that defeats my objectives for a binary
> > distro - that it should be installable with a minimum of work.
> 
> So what do you do differently on your Gentoo installs?
> 
> I take it just running grub-install /dev/hda (or sda or whatever) fails
> on both so you must be doing something different (i.e. configuring it
> manually) or gentoo must be doing something for you...
> 
> The other alternative of course is that perhaps they use different
> kernels and that Ubuntu happens to have the devices ordered in linux
> differently to the BIOS and Gentoo (with a hand compiled kernel
> perhaps?) happens to have them in the right order.
> 
> I am interested in why you seem to persist in thinking that the binary
> distribution should read your BIOS somehow 

for ease of installation basically.

> to work out what's what yet
> Gentoo shouldn't.

You're missing the point here. When I install Gentoo I know it's a
protracted process due to the compile time, and I know that I'll be
configuring grub manually. Having done it a few times it's now pretty
straight forward, and takes me about 10 minutes, if that.

I don't run grub-install when installing Gentoo, I run grub from the
command line.

gentoobox.local.net#> grub

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

Then I edit grub.conf to point to the necessary kernels etc. Because
I've installed Gentoo I know what the disk/partition setup is and where
I want grub to install itself, and grub doesn't need to do anything
automatically.

However, a binary install is different because the install routines
normally ask a few questions about grub setup, and then write the config
file and install the boot code automatically. So I get annoyed when this
breaks down. Sure, I could then spend some time figuring out what went
wrong, booting from a rescue disk and editing the config files from
there prior to re-booting. The problem is that what I want out of a
binary distro is a quick and trouble-free install, and if it isn't
forthcmoming then I'll look elsewhere.
 

> 
> Hopefully your reply will clarify my confusion.
> 
> Simon.
>