Random kernel update breakage

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:18:28 -0400, Sam wrote:

> AFAIK installing a kernel should involve merely updating 
> /boot/grub/grub.conf. I can't think of any reason why GRUB's stage files 
> have to be involved. The script that updates it, /sbin/new-kernel-pkg 
> invokes /sbin/grubby, apparently, to do that.
> 
> Without looking at grubby's source, a strings on the binary shows a 
> reference to /boot/grub/stage1. So, grubby might be doing to grub itself, in 
> addition to twiddling grub.conf, and occasionally gets it wrong.

It only looks for the stage1 file with a read-only operation to detect
whether GRUB may be installed (it's called "grubby" but supports other
boot loaders like LILO). It also examines the boot sector, again with a
read-only operation.