Grub2 failings
Peter Robinson
pbrobinson at gmail.com
Sat Aug 4 19:01:04 UTC 2012
Peter,
This is completely off topic for the advisory board list, please take
the conversation to a technical list that is more appropriate, or file
a bug if you believe your specific use case doesn't work.
Peter
On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Peter Zoeller <peter_zoeller at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> I had the pleasure of upgrading my system recently from F15 to F16. The
> upgrade using PreUpgrade worked beautifully. However what trashed my system
> was Grub2. In my estimation grub2 is a kludge and it doesn't work properly.
> Grub was a beautiful step up from Lilo both in simplicity, ease of use and
> ease of control. Grub2 in my estimation is a regression. It obviously is
> written by a bunch of Microsoft heads who totally miss the KISS principle.
> I have gone back to installing and using grub.
>
> So how did it break my system. It doesn't read the drive geometry
> correctly. It is a step back by assigning hex code to partitions and does
> so incorrectly. I thought I had seen the last of hex code when I left
> college in the seventies and had to learn to read core dumps. Now I find I
> have to relearn it in order to deal with UUID assignments. No wonder Linux
> doesn't make it into the mainstream.
>
> A boot loader is supposed to boot a system and that is all it should do
> which grub does marvelously well. System setup and configuration should and
> must be left to the operating systems and systemd. To display what I mean
> by grub2 screwing things up let me show you.
>
> Fdisk of my main drive...
>
> [root at HawksNest grayhawk]# fdisk /dev/sda
>
> Command (m for help): p
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
> Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x000b485f
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sda1 * 63 144584999 72292468+ 83 Linux
> /dev/sda2 144585000 186530714 20972857+ 83 Linux
> /dev/sda3 186530715 225616859 19543072+ 83 Linux
> /dev/sda4 225616860 312576704 43479922+ 5 Extended
> /dev/sda5 225616923 264703004 19543041 83 Linux
> /dev/sda6 264703068 303789149 19543041 83 Linux
> /dev/sda7 303789213 312576704 4393746 82 Linux swap / Solaris
>
> Df of my partitions as read when they are mounted.....
>
> [root at HawksNest ~]# df -T
> Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> rootfs rootfs 71104256 32761604 34728032 49% /
> devtmpfs devtmpfs 991944 0 991944 0% /dev
> tmpfs tmpfs 1000572 264 1000308 1% /dev/shm
> tmpfs tmpfs 1000572 692 999880 1% /run
> /dev/sda1 ext3 71104256 32761604 34728032 49% /
> tmpfs tmpfs 1000572 0 1000572 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
> tmpfs tmpfs 1000572 0 1000572 0% /media
> /dev/sda2 ext3 20596820 12864132 6684048 66% /mnt/sda2
> /dev/sda3 reiserfs 19542436 14015280 5527156 72% /mnt/sda3
> /dev/sda5 reiserfs 19542436 12561496 6980940 65% /mnt/sda5
> /dev/sda6 ext3 19191340 4730784 13483404 26% /mnt/sda6
>
> Here is the grub2 configuration file that messed up the system
>
> ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
> menuentry 'Fedora (3.4.6-1.fc16.i686.PAE)' --class fedora --class gnu-linux
> --class gnu --class os {
> load_video
> set gfxpayload=keep
> insmod gzio
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod ext2
> set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> abc67dd1-53b1-47ca-a27f-0c7d84829f51
> echo 'Loading Fedora (3.4.6-1.fc16.i686.PAE)'
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.6-1.fc16.i686.PAE
> root=UUID=6c3c0e3d-2708-439f-beb7-b9937d1d5f0a ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0
> KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
> initrd /boot/initramfs-3.4.6-1.fc16.i686.PAE.img
> }
> menuentry 'Fedora Linux, with Linux 3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE' --class fedora
> --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
> load_video
> set gfxpayload=keep
> insmod gzio
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod ext2
> set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> abc67dd1-53b1-47ca-a27f-0c7d84829f51
> echo 'Loading Linux 3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE ...'
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE
> root=UUID=abc67dd1-53b1-47ca-a27f-0c7d84829f51 ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0
> KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
> initrd /boot/initramfs-3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE.img
> }
> menuentry 'Fedora Linux, with Linux 3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE (recovery mode)'
> --class fedora --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
> load_video
> set gfxpayload=keep
> insmod gzio
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod ext2
> set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> abc67dd1-53b1-47ca-a27f-0c7d84829f51
> echo 'Loading Linux 3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE ...'
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE
> root=UUID=abc67dd1-53b1-47ca-a27f-0c7d84829f51 ro single rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0
> rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
> initrd /boot/initramfs-3.4.4-4.fc16.i686.PAE.img
> }
> ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
>
> ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
> ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
>
> ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
> menuentry "Fedora (2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE) (on /dev/sda2)" --class
> gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod ext2
> set root='(hd0,msdos2)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> 6c3c0e3d-2708-439f-beb7-b9937d1d5f0a
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/sda1
> KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
> initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE.img
> }
> menuentry "Fedora (2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE) (on /dev/sda2)" --class
> gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod ext2
> set root='(hd0,msdos2)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> 6c3c0e3d-2708-439f-beb7-b9937d1d5f0a
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/sda2
> KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
> initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE.img
> }
> menuentry "KNOPPIX (on /dev/sda3)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os
> {
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod reiserfs
> set root='(hd0,msdos3)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> 8cd61602-4981-4b11-a2f8-8e06bd4baff2
> linux /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 rootwait lang=us apm=power-off nomce
> libata.force=noncq tz=localtime loglevel=1 rw
> }
> menuentry "Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.37-64 Default (on /dev/sda3)"
> --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod reiserfs
> set root='(hd0,msdos3)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> 8cd61602-4981-4b11-a2f8-8e06bd4baff2
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-64 root=/dev/sda1 ro lang=us apm=power-off
> tz=localtime vga=791
> }
> menuentry "KNOPPIX (on /dev/sda5)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os
> {
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod reiserfs
> set root='(hd0,msdos5)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> 89b7ce78-6ccf-4fc4-9af2-2a392494473b
> linux /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 rootwait lang=us apm=power-off
> vga=791 nomce loglevel=0 quiet rw
> }
> menuentry "Fedora (2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE) (on /dev/sda6)" --class
> gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
> insmod part_msdos
> insmod ext2
> set root='(hd0,msdos6)'
> search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root
> 44c1d6b1-51f2-4eac-880f-9262996556d6
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE ro
> root=UUID=44c1d6b1-51f2-4eac-880f-9262996556d6 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD
> rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
> initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.PAE.img
> }
>
> So what are the issues with this....
>
> I have two fedora partitions sda1 and sda2. It no longer boots the second
> installation which is a different version of Fedora. I teach Linux and use
> other installations to learn differences between distros in order to bring
> this knowledge to class. The second Fedora is not my live system but the
> same as what was being used in the class.
>
> The third partition sda3 is a reiser file system and a Knoppix hard drive
> install installed and modified as a Debian distribution. Under grub2 it no
> longer boots because the kernel can't find the file system. Why grub2 is
> telling it to look in the wrong place.
>
> The fifth partition sda5 is a pure Knoppix hard drive install and funny
> enough it does boot.
>
> The remaining one sda6 is at the moment a bad install and should not be part
> of the boot menu. It is used to install and test out and learn other
> distros. With grub it was child's play to install other distros make a mod
> to the grub.conf to include or exclude the new distro. You no longer had to
> rerun like you did with Lilo and now with grub2 your are back to Lilo times
> where you must rerun grub2 to have the new configuration installed. Talk
> about taking a step back.
>
> With Lilo and grub it was easy from the boot loader screen to directly boot
> into a kernel shell to rescue a pooched hard drive. Like to see how you can
> do that using grub2?
>
> I have reverted back to using grub, a system that is elegant, simple, well
> designed and dumped the kludge that grub2 is. I shall continue to use grub
> and our file server at work that I maintain shall also continue to use grub.
> I will warn my students about the failures of grub2 and let them decide
> whether to upgrade to grub2 or stick with grub.
> _______________________________________________
> advisory-board mailing list
> advisory-board at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
More information about the advisory-board
mailing list