Re: Does grub2 solve this problem I am having with grub1? RE: usbsticks.

[Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org>]

On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 06:59 -0600, Paul Elliott wrote:

> As usb devices become more used this will be an important problem.

Are you sure that it will be seen as a separate device?

> For example, I want to create a usb flash drive for use in an
> installfest, for people with no CD or floppy.

That would be great.

> Partition 1 will have the kernel and initrd for the Fedora installation
> process.
> 
> Partition 2 will have the same for Opensuse.
> 
> Partiton 3 the same for Mandriva.
> 
> Partiton 4 ubuntu.
> 
> How do I write a menu.lst to boot these different kernels with
> different parameters, and partitions? I do not know which device the
> usbstick will be at boot time, because the target systems have
> different number of hard disks.

Would not the boot device be hd0?

> As matters now stand, there is no way to do it, and you seem to be
> telling me the problem is not fixed with grub2!

Even if I add boot_device now, there is an issue with the variable
expansion, to that ($boot_device,3) would not expand to a valid device
name.

One possible approach would be to use LVM (Logical Volume Manager) -
it's supported by grub2.  You could install grub on a small boot
partition and allocate the rest to as an LVM partition, that would be
split into volumes.  Then you could refer to the volumes by name.

> It is easy to think of many analogous problems, in the comercial world.

I agree.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin