I am not sure when this started happening, but with "recent" Fedora releases for systems with grub2 bootloaders, an additional "rescue" kernel has been provided. This "rescue" kernel is never updated but remains the same as that provided by anaconda. I assume that it is the kernel that was available at install time. I also assume that the purpose of the "rescue" kernel is to provide a backup capability just in case the updating of kernels has managed to create an unbootable system.
The question: If this is a good option for grub2 based systems, why isn't a good options to have for systems with extlinux bootloaders too?
Just curious.
Gene
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 07:24:20AM -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
I am not sure when this started happening, but with "recent" Fedora releases for systems with grub2 bootloaders, an additional "rescue" kernel has been provided. This "rescue" kernel is never updated but remains the same as that provided by anaconda. I assume that it is the kernel that was available at install time. I also assume that the purpose of the "rescue" kernel is to provide a backup capability just in case the updating of kernels has managed to create an unbootable system.
The question: If this is a good option for grub2 based systems, why isn't a good options to have for systems with extlinux bootloaders too?
It's a fine option, but the feature to add extlinux support was done just to support building cloud images, where the rescue image can't be selected and is therefore just deadweight, so that wasn't added. That doesn't mean the feature couldn't be further extended to be more generally useful, but no one is signed up for the work. If you want to do it, I'll help test.
If you add this image to the extlinux.conf file by hand, of course, it will work as expected.
On 11/27/2013 10:44 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 07:24:20AM -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
I am not sure when this started happening, but with "recent" Fedora releases for systems with grub2 bootloaders, an additional "rescue" kernel has been provided. This "rescue" kernel is never updated but remains the same as that provided by anaconda. I assume that it is the kernel that was available at install time. I also assume that the purpose of the "rescue" kernel is to provide a backup capability just in case the updating of kernels has managed to create an unbootable system.
The question: If this is a good option for grub2 based systems, why isn't a good options to have for systems with extlinux bootloaders too?
It's a fine option, but the feature to add extlinux support was done just to support building cloud images, where the rescue image can't be selected and is therefore just deadweight, so that wasn't added. That doesn't mean the feature couldn't be further extended to be more generally useful, but no one is signed up for the work. If you want to do it, I'll help test.
If you add this image to the extlinux.conf file by hand, of course, it will work as expected.
So, the only reason that extlinux was added was for cloud support and the rescue kernel would not be of use there. I suspect that most (almost all) folks prefer the flexibility and general functionality of grub2 although there is grumbling now and then about it being complex and hard to understand let alone get it to do something specific.
From that perspective, extlinux does offer a significant advantage: it is plain simple (or can be anyway). This might be attractive to a not-insignificant portion of the Fedora users if it was explained and demonstrated to them.
I also noticed that debian has an extlinux-update script which manages to complexity things like grub2-mkconfig does. It uses os-prober in a manner similar to the way grub2 does to find other installed/bootable systems so that entries can be added for them.
I am not sure how much, if any, effort should be expended in improving extlinux capabilities.
Having said that, a question Matt since you seem to be much more familiar with extlinux (an I assume syslinux also): does extlinux/syslinux currently have the functionality to replace grub2? Does it support EFI?
Gene
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:42:00AM -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
From that perspective, extlinux does offer a significant advantage: it is plain simple (or can be anyway). This might be attractive to a not-insignificant portion of the Fedora users if it was explained and demonstrated to them.
Yes indeed. And I do happen to also run it on my laptop.
Having said that, a question Matt since you seem to be much more familiar with extlinux (an I assume syslinux also): does extlinux/syslinux currently have the functionality to replace grub2? Does it support EFI?
Yes, with some limitations. Probably gummiboot is the interesting thing to look at in that case.
On Wed, 2013-11-27 at 13:40 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:42:00AM -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
From that perspective, extlinux does offer a significant advantage: it is plain simple (or can be anyway). This might be attractive to a not-insignificant portion of the Fedora users if it was explained and demonstrated to them.
Yes indeed. And I do happen to also run it on my laptop.
Having said that, a question Matt since you seem to be much more familiar with extlinux (an I assume syslinux also): does extlinux/syslinux currently have the functionality to replace grub2? Does it support EFI?
Yes, with some limitations. Probably gummiboot is the interesting thing to look at in that case.
Random mjg59 quotes from IRC yesterday:
<mjg59> pbrobinson: gummiboot is a toy loader. It's not generally useful. <mjg59> There's too many corner cases that can't be supported with it
...he's not a fan. (context was a discussion of how to get 32-bit UEFI firmware things like my new tablet working with Fedora, but that seems like a general opinion of gummiboot).
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 07:38:09PM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Wed, 2013-11-27 at 13:40 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:42:00AM -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
From that perspective, extlinux does offer a significant advantage: it is plain simple (or can be anyway). This might be attractive to a not-insignificant portion of the Fedora users if it was explained and demonstrated to them.
Yes indeed. And I do happen to also run it on my laptop.
Having said that, a question Matt since you seem to be much more familiar with extlinux (an I assume syslinux also): does extlinux/syslinux currently have the functionality to replace grub2? Does it support EFI?
Yes, with some limitations. Probably gummiboot is the interesting thing to look at in that case.
Random mjg59 quotes from IRC yesterday:
<mjg59> pbrobinson: gummiboot is a toy loader. It's not generally useful. <mjg59> There's too many corner cases that can't be supported with it
...he's not a fan. (context was a discussion of how to get 32-bit UEFI firmware things like my new tablet working with Fedora, but that seems like a general opinion of gummiboot).
.. but it does not mean that the loader is useless at all. I'm (ThinkPad user) pretty happy with gummiboot for last year. It's well integrated to the distribution since Fedora 19 and the configuration is soo simple and no turing-complete ;-)
Karel
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El Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:42:00 -0500 Gene Czarcinski gczarcinski@gmail.com escribió:
On 11/27/2013 10:44 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 07:24:20AM -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
I am not sure when this started happening, but with "recent" Fedora releases for systems with grub2 bootloaders, an additional "rescue" kernel has been provided. This "rescue" kernel is never updated but remains the same as that provided by anaconda. I assume that it is the kernel that was available at install time. I also assume that the purpose of the "rescue" kernel is to provide a backup capability just in case the updating of kernels has managed to create an unbootable system.
The question: If this is a good option for grub2 based systems, why isn't a good options to have for systems with extlinux bootloaders too?
It's a fine option, but the feature to add extlinux support was done just to support building cloud images, where the rescue image can't be selected and is therefore just deadweight, so that wasn't added. That doesn't mean the feature couldn't be further extended to be more generally useful, but no one is signed up for the work. If you want to do it, I'll help test.
If you add this image to the extlinux.conf file by hand, of course, it will work as expected.
So, the only reason that extlinux was added was for cloud support and the rescue kernel would not be of use there. I suspect that most (almost all) folks prefer the flexibility and general functionality of grub2 although there is grumbling now and then about it being complex and hard to understand let alone get it to do something specific.
From that perspective, extlinux does offer a significant advantage: it is plain simple (or can be anyway). This might be attractive to a not-insignificant portion of the Fedora users if it was explained and demonstrated to them.
I also noticed that debian has an extlinux-update script which manages to complexity things like grub2-mkconfig does. It uses os-prober in a manner similar to the way grub2 does to find other installed/bootable systems so that entries can be added for them.
I am not sure how much, if any, effort should be expended in improving extlinux capabilities.
Having said that, a question Matt since you seem to be much more familiar with extlinux (an I assume syslinux also): does extlinux/syslinux currently have the functionality to replace grub2? Does it support EFI?
grub2 is the only bootloader in fedora with support for secure boot
Dennis
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