[Bug 752059] MajorMod: Manually Upgrading the Kernel: Update for GRUB 2

[Jaromir Hradilek]

On 04/25/2012 04:27 AM, Ben Cotton wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Chris Murphy<lists at colorremedies.com>  wrote:
>> What is a realistic cutoff date for a.) removal of the sub-section in question; b) incorporating a revision of it?
>>
> You're right that we should have it done by 5/7 in order to meet the
> goal for F17 GA. That said, guides often aren't released until after
> the GA. The schedule is not super-rigid in that regard.
>
> I'll go ahead and comment out the offending material if you can verify
> that I'm yanking the right parts:
>
> Bug 750108 (security guide)
>    * comment out the entirety of Section 2.1.2.2.1. Password Protecting GRUB
>
> Bug 752059 (sysadmin guide)
>    * comment out Section 20.6.1
>
> Is this correct?

I do not agree. There are more sections in the book that directly or 
indirectly discuss GRUB and require the user to verify its configuration 
(section 20.5, "Verifying the Initial RAM Disk Image"; section 22.1.2.1, 
"Configuring the Memory Usage"). All these sections need to be reviewed 
and updated.

 From my point of view, commenting an entire section out in this 
situation is not an acceptable fix:

   1. By commenting this section out, you lose more than you gain, 
because it contains more important information than just where to find 
the configuration file and how to edit it.

   2. Most Fedora users do use GRUB, not YABOOT, nor any other boot 
loader mentioned in the book. Not having a section on GRUB is more 
confusing than having outdated information.

   3. The System Administrator's Guide does not have a dedicated chapter 
for GRUB at the moment. The chapter in question is not about GRUB, which 
is something that is not mentioned in this discussion and should be. It 
is about manually upgrading the kernel, which is something people are 
not encouraged to do (see the admonition at the very beginning of the 
chapter). People who decide to do this are usually very technical and 
are capable of recognizing that something is different on their system 
and that the chapter is outdated.

Note that this is a known issue, I am aware of it, I filed that bug 
myself, and I am of course going to review the sections in question 
before the release of Fedora 17. If you create a wiki page or send me a 
patch, I will of course take a look at it and probably use it. After 
that, I will backport the fix to the Fedora 16 branch and republish the 
book with this fix in place.

Cheers,
-- 
Jaromir Hradilek
Associate Content Author
Engineering Content Services

Red Hat Czech, s. r. o.
Purkynova 99
612 45 Brno, Czech Republic