From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1JntJP-0008Al-U9 for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:52 -0400 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JntJO-0008AT-5g for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:50 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JntJI-000890-EQ for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:49 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JntJI-00088u-7a for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:44 -0400 Received: from c60.cesmail.net ([216.154.195.49]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_ARCFOUR_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JntJE-0008Tx-V6 for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:44 -0400 Received: from unknown (HELO relay.cesmail.net) ([192.168.1.81]) by c60.cesmail.net with ESMTP; 21 Apr 2008 06:31:08 -0400 Received: from [192.168.1.21] (static-72-92-88-10.phlapa.fios.verizon.net [72.92.88.10]) by relay.cesmail.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B003619058 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Pavel Roskin To: The development of GRUB 2 In-Reply-To: <20080420100713.GA16764@thorin> References: <4807AA02.1020909@mail.berlios.de> <20080418132858.GH29226@thorin> <480A02F3.7000504@mail.berlios.de> <20080420100713.GA16764@thorin> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:06 -0400 Message-Id: <1208773866.29071.11.camel@dv> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.12.3 (2.12.3-4.fc8) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. Subject: Re: grub-probe fails during grub2 update (Debian) X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: The development of GRUB 2 List-Id: The development of GRUB 2 List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:31:50 -0000 On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 12:07 +0200, Robert Millan wrote: > I propose that if grub-probe can't find an entry in device.map to convert the > device it just found to a grub drive, it runs grub-mkdevicemap and tries again. > > Other approaches would be to kill device.map completely and just pipe the > information from grub-mkdevicemap directly, but I think that might be too > radical. > > What does everyone think? I would explore the possibility of retiring device.map completely or limiting its use to some rare cases. In the vast majority of cases, the installer should not rely on knowing the BIOS numbers of the devices involved in the boot process. BIOS provides the boot drive, which should generally be trusted. The installer only needs to know whether the media is a hard drive to enable a workaround for buggy BIOSes providing a wrong boot drive. I'm not sure about EFI and Open firmware, but I think the situation is similar. There should be enough information to find the boot drive at the boot time without requiring any guesswork in the installer. We may need to tell GRUB what device to use to look for additional files when the boot process involves more than one drive. But even then, I'd rather prefer that GRUB uses labels, not hardcoded BIOS numbers. -- Regards, Pavel Roskin