Replacing grubby with grub2-mkconfig in kernel install process

Ben Rosser rosser.bjr at gmail.com
Sun Jun 17 04:08:31 UTC 2012


In Fedora 17, when you install grub2 and generate a fresh config file, that
config is produced by grub2-mkconfig. However, when you install a kernel
update, the kernel's entry is added to the grub2 boot menu by grubby.

This produces messy grub boot menus. The entries added by grubby read
something like "Fedora (%kernel_version)". grub2-mkconfig, on the other
hand, only displays one "Fedora Linux" boot option and places the other
kernels and their recovery mode environments in a submenu called "Advanced
Options".

Now, I never really liked seeing three kernels on the main menu to begin
with, and I think the new grub2 approach of hiding the other kernels in a
submenu is nice. But then as soon as I start installing updates the submenu
becomes incomplete (and eventually useless, as the new kernels won't be
listed there) and the grubby options take over the menu.

It seems to me that we should make the boot menu more consistent somehow. I
feel like the simplest solution is just to run grub2-mkconfig at every
kernel update, and stop using grubby for this. Then everything would look
consistent- the "Fedora Linux" boot option would have the latest kernel
and all kernels would always be listed under the submenu. (As far as I
know, this would just be a change to the kernel specfile, right?).

Alternatively, if Fedora does want boot menus that look like the ones
produced by grubby, then the grub2 default configuration should be changed
to reflect that, so the boot menu will always look consistent.

I should add that I did see a reference to possibly replacing grubby with a
"grub-updconf" (though I'm not aware of such a program) on the wiki-
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Grub2 - so possibly there are
already plans for this?

Ben
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