A rant regarding LILO and various other related issues

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 11:44 -0700, Mike Bird wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 11:13, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
> > At least grub HAS a command line.
> 
> True.  But Grub's command line is a lot of code and AFAIK it only
> addresses one rare issue.

I listed at least three here:

On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 11:13, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
>   I'm sure the reference had to do with some grub config error after a
> kernel update, or change in kernel options gone wrong, or kernel or
> initrd somehow deleted or moved.  Grub can talk to the serial port and
> allow interaction through it's shell over the serial port.

And rare or not, it's critical to have this support if you have many
remote systems that you keep up to date (including the kernel).
Especially when you consider that lilo has NO support for that class of
problems: Move initrd (yes, I know, its better to copy) to /tmp, gunzip
and uncpio it, modify it, package it back up, copy it back, reboot.
Oops, I forgot run lilo, or I did it so quick and didn't notice it
failed because I made a typo when copying it back.  Dumb move.  But at
least with grub running over a serial port recovery from this is
trivial.  With lilo, you need to make a (potentially expensive) trip to
the data center.


>   It doesn't for example, deal with the common
> case of a trashed MBR - but neither of course does Lilo.

It's a little silly to even mention that, even though your not bringing
it up as an advantage over lilo.  Unless your talking about loading into
flash (like linuxbios), then your never gonna get this in a bootloader,
command line or not.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
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