making the --no-floopy option of grub-install more descriptive

making the --no-floopy option of grub-install more descriptive

[Felix Zielcke]

Hi,

on a Debian bug report [0] someone complained that the --no-floppy
option should be better documented in the man page, because it only
works if device.map doestn't exist or --recheck is given and he was
confused of this.
But it's generated from the --help output and I'm not that sure to make
it longer.
Or would something like this be okay?

Index: util/i386/pc/grub-install.in
===================================================================
--- util/i386/pc/grub-install.in	(revision 2237)
+++ util/i386/pc/grub-install.in	(working copy)
@@ -65,7 +65,8 @@ Install GRUB on your drive.
   --grub-mkimage=FILE     use FILE as grub-mkimage
   --grub-mkdevicemap=FILE use FILE as grub-mkdevicemap
   --grub-probe=FILE       use FILE as grub-probe
-  --no-floppy             do not probe any floppy drive
+  --no-floppy             do not probe any floppy drive. Works only if
+                          device.map doestn't exit or --recheck is
given
   --recheck               probe a device map even if it already exists
   --force                 install even if problems are detected


[0] http://bugs.debian.org/530848
-- 
Felix Zielcke

Re: making the --no-floopy option of grub-install more descriptive

[Pavel Roskin]

On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 14:05 +0200, Felix Zielcke wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> on a Debian bug report [0] someone complained that the --no-floppy
> option should be better documented in the man page, because it only
> works if device.map doestn't exist or --recheck is given and he was
> confused of this.

For --no-floppy not to work, grub-install would have to probe the floppy
when --no-floppy is used.  I don't see the evidence of it happening.

> But it's generated from the --help output and I'm not that sure to make
> it longer.
> Or would something like this be okay?
> 
> Index: util/i386/pc/grub-install.in
> ===================================================================
> --- util/i386/pc/grub-install.in	(revision 2237)
> +++ util/i386/pc/grub-install.in	(working copy)
> @@ -65,7 +65,8 @@ Install GRUB on your drive.
>    --grub-mkimage=FILE     use FILE as grub-mkimage
>    --grub-mkdevicemap=FILE use FILE as grub-mkdevicemap
>    --grub-probe=FILE       use FILE as grub-probe
> -  --no-floppy             do not probe any floppy drive
> +  --no-floppy             do not probe any floppy drive. Works only if
> +                          device.map doestn't exit or --recheck is
> given

First of all, please check spelling of your patches.

Many options in many programs have effect only if some other options are
used or not used.  It's a minor technical detail.  Such details may
belong to manuals, but perhaps not at this stage of development.  In my
opinion, the whole idea of probing all hardware in the system is broken.
grub-install cannot predict how BIOS would see the devices.  So
"--no-floppy" can go away before the next stable release.

We could reverse the logic and not probe floppies by default.  But I'm
not sure it's worth the trouble.

We really need to support installation on non-probed devices.  Then we
can limit the probing to the cases when it's explicitly requested.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin