grub vs. grub2

[Alan Cox]

> The bottom line is that grub's days are numbered. grub2 is the future. No  
> amount of complaining is going to change that. Even if someone stepped up to  
> the plate and volunteered to maintain grub going forward, I wouldn't rely on  
> it, in perpetuity.

grub2 is not the future. Grub2 is an unfortunate accident on the way.
That said much of the problem being experienced is because Fedora 16
wasn't properly tested and instead of fixing their grub2 configuration
and migration they totally screwed it up and left boxes unbootable.

That was *crap*.

On a box with insufficient space they should have given the user the
choice of grub1 or telling grub2 to install itself using a map file
(which is *exactly* how grub1 works).

> And, it's certainly possible that the affected hardware might reach its end  
> of life, before the move to a bigger reserved boot space becomes mandatory,  
> so they're off the hook. But there's really no way to tell that.

You don't need a bigger reserved boot space. That's a Fedora screwup.
Tell Grub2 to use a map file.

> One of my RAID1 mdraid machines did have its partitions starting at sector  
> 63. And I managed to rearrange them without having to backup and restore,  
> and eventually update everything to F16.

Would have been easier if Fedora 16 had offered the use of map files. The
grub2 people covered this but Fedora blew it, just like the 10,000 lines
of garbage that break and mash your grub2 config are a total failure.

Fortunately grub2 is not the future. On an EFI system with Matt Fleming's
work you can boot a kernel direct from the firmware.

Alan