Grub Manual

[Robert P. J. Day]

karl,

  despite your thoroughly ill-informed and infantile slurs in my
direction regarding my teaching ability, i am going to invest a few
minutes and give you some feedback on your latest attempt at a grub
manual, in return for which i'm sure you will describe me as "stupid."
such is life.

On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Karl Larsen wrote:

> Here is the new version of the Grub Manual. I think the caps are all
> there. And you will hate my definition of a root.

why are you already warning readers that you are about to provide a
definition of a "root" that you know they will hate?  if you're so
sure they will hate it, why use it?  why not use a definition that you
are confident they will accept because it conforms to standard usage?
boldly announcing that you're about to write something that readers
will "hate" is not the best way to gain their confidence.  i'm just
sayin'.

> There is nothing simple about what Grub does.

that is simply editorializing on your part, and it's not clear it adds
anything to the presentation or the information that you plan on
imparting.

> It is the tiny software ...

i've already mentioned in a previous post that describing something as
"the tiny software" is effectively content-free, and serves no
pedagogical purpose.  and you're already contradicting yourself by
simultaneously describing grub as tiny, yet not simple.  at this
point, you shouldn't be surprised if readers are getting somewhat
confused.

> ... At first look at what it takes in the file /grub/grub.conf to
> boot a Linux system.

quite simply, there is no file named "/grub/grub.conf".  and since,
only paragraphs into your alleged manual, you have written something
that is demonstrably wrong, that's where i stopped reading.  i hope
this short technical review has been helpful.

rday

-- 
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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