Grub installation. First potential Fedora killer

[Gene Czarcinski]

On 01/07/2014 12:28 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> On Jan 7, 2014, at 12:28 AM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
>> I recalled that
>> we'd had some kind of issue with the mkconfig/install ordering before
>> while I was writing the patch, indeed, but I couldn't recall if it was
>> mkconfig sometimes requiring install to have been run, or the other way
>> around...I could probably dredge it out of long-term memory if I sat
>> down and looked for it.
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-grub/2012-12/msg00018.html
>
> grub-install comes before grub-mkconfig. And /etc/default/grub needs to be written before grub-mkconfig is called.
>
> But all of those details can be ignored if the existing code for "install bootloader" is used for  "do not install bootloader", while the later merely causes option --grub-setup=/bin/true to be inserted into the grub-install command. That's more robust as everyone's exercising the same code.
>
OK, I have been following this thread with interest.  For years now, I 
have been accomplishing the same thing (not touching the real boot MBR) 
in my kickstart installs by specifying that --boot-drive=sdb (for 
example) when the real MBR is on /dev/sda.  This installs/creates all of 
grub2's configuration while not really installing the MBR.  It is not 
clear to me that grubs-install really needs to run before grub2-mkconfig 
is run but this approach lets both happen.

I like Adam's patch a lot although it obviously needs some testing to 
make sure that it works the way we want it to work.

I have "this thing" about destroying working systems so I have a 
multiboot implementation based on using grub2 which facilitates multiple 
installs with each install still being available.

Gene