FC4t2 no good without LILO

[Guy Fraser]

Bravo

On Wed, 2005-13-04 at 10:46 -0700, Mike Bird wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 05:28, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > If you have other SPECIFIC issues with the currently aviable grub
> > package in rawhide, raise them and they will be evaluated case-by-case.
> 
> In the real world, a history of unreliability is a SPECIFIC issue.  It's
> the SPECIFIC issue that gets Windows servers replaced by Linux servers.
> 
> Peter in his cubicle may believe that Grub is now perfect.  Even if he's
> right it's irrelevant at this time because nobody (except unwitting
> Redhat shareholders) is going to bet the farm on a new version of a
> product with a history of unreliability and missing features.
> 
> A year from now, if Peter's dreams are realized, would be the time to
> consider removing Lilo.  Or maybe that would be the time to start
> replacing Grub Legacy with Grub2.
> 
> FC4t2 Grub includes a Dec'04 MD patch, a Jan'05 MD patch, a Feb'05 MD
> patch, and a Mar'05 MD patch.  We all hope that no more patches will be
> needed for MD in Grub, but is it realistic to bet the Redhat farm on it
> today?
> 
> I'm certainly not going to bet our clients' data on Grub until I see how
> reliable Grub is now and also whether the next few updates are reliable
> too.
> 
> A HISTORY of reliability is essential for any mission critical package. 
> A proven history over multiple upgrades is particularly important for
> Grub which uses a fragile shell/awk/sed script to parse mdadm output
> instead of copying the simple GET_ARRAY_INFO ioctl used by Lilo.
> 
> The appropriate course is for Peter to restore Lilo, apologize on behalf
> of Redhat for taking five years to add MD support to Grub, state that
> Grub is now believed to support MD under such-and-such SPECIFIC
> conditions, and ask us to give Grub another try.
> 
> --Mike Bird
> 
> 
-- 
Guy Fraser
Network Administrator
The Internet Centre
1-888-450-6787
(780)450-6787