GRUB 1.95 is released

GRUB 1.95 is released

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

I'm happy to announce the release of GRUB 1.95. This is the sixth of
our prereleases leading up to GRUB 2.0. We encourage you to try it, as
we have done a significant amount of work towards GRUB 2. Note that this 
release is mainly for developers who are willing to contribute to our 
project. If you need a working solution immediately, you'd better to stick to 
GRUB Legacy at the moment.

The source distribution is available from <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/>.

Send any questions, ideas, bug reports to <grub-devel@gnu.org>.

Here is the relevant NEWS:

New in 1.95 - 2006-10-15:

* Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
  partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".

* grub-probefs is renamed to grub-probe, and supports printing a
  guessed OS device name and a GRUB drive name.

* RAID and LVM support is added.

* New command, echo.

* The disk API is changed to support 64-bit addressing.

* A TGA loader is added for the video API.

Thanks,
Okuji

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
> * Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
>   partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
 
Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?

If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?

Using Linux style names might make sense as well... hda1,...

Regards,
Stefan

-- 
coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.
      Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613
Email: info@coresystems.de  • http://www.coresystems.de/

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Dennis Clarke]

> * Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
>> * Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
>>   partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
>
> Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
>
> If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
> become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?
>
> Using Linux style names might make sense as well... hda1,...
>

I would prefer a naming style that is not specific to any OS at all.

So hard disks numbered as "disks" and partitions" as "partition" works real
well.  Keeping in mind that even a partition is an abstraction as opposed
to a real thing.

Dennis

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Dennis Clarke <dclarke@blastwave.org> [061015 17:35]:
> > * Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
> >> * Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
> >>   partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
> >
> > Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
> >
> > If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
> > become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?
> >
> > Using Linux style names might make sense as well... hda1,...
> 
> I would prefer a naming style that is not specific to any OS at all.
 
Good point. (hd0,0) already did that, right?

> So hard disks numbered as "disks" and partitions" as "partition" works real
> well.  Keeping in mind that even a partition is an abstraction as opposed
> to a real thing.

We can continue philosophy and discuss that what grub is seeing as disk
might be an abstraction as well. It might run in vmware, or on some
other hypervisor or emulator. 

So do I understand you correctly that, abstracted devices are counted
from 0, whereas physical devices are counted from 1? Is that the rule
this follows?

Stefan

-- 
coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.
      Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613
Email: info@coresystems.de  • http://www.coresystems.de/

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Vladimir Serbinenko]

Stefan Reinauer wrote:

>* Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
>  
>
>>* Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
>>  partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
>>    
>>
> 
>Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
>
>If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
>become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?
>
>Using Linux style names might make sense as well... hda1,...
>
>  
>
It was already discussed plenty of times and the answer is that with 
BIOS it's impossible to guess the linux's names, so it would just 
confuse the users

>Regards,
>Stefan
>
>  
>

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Dennis Clarke]

> Stefan Reinauer wrote:
>
>>* Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
>>
>>
>>>* Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
>>>  partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
>>
>>If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
>>become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?
>>
>>Using Linux style names might make sense as well... hda1,...
>>
>>
>>
> It was already discussed plenty of times and the answer is that with
> BIOS it's impossible to guess the linux's names, so it would just
> confuse the users
>

Or it may be Solaris or OS/2 Warp or some OS not yet released.

dc

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Dennis Clarke <dclarke@blastwave.org> [061015 17:41]:
> > It was already discussed plenty of times and the answer is that with
> > BIOS it's impossible to guess the linux's names, so it would just
> > confuse the users
> 
> Or it may be Solaris or OS/2 Warp or some OS not yet released.

I enjoy the amusement my suggestion obviously provoked. Indeed we could
become philosophical and find out that the device naming in the above
mentioned might be less broken than the linux naming scheme. But that
was evidently not my point when writing the original email. 

The amusement is on my side in that the original point is turned a blind
eye.

Stefan

-- 
coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.
      Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613
Email: info@coresystems.de  • http://www.coresystems.de/

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder@gmail.com> [061015 17:36]:
> >Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
> >
> >If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
> >become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?
> >
> >Using Linux style names might make sense as well... hda1,...
>
> It was already discussed plenty of times and the answer is that with 
> BIOS it's impossible to guess the linux's names, so it would just 
> confuse the users

Sorry if I missed that. Counting disks from 0 and partitions from 1 
will not confuse the users, because ...? ;-)

You are right, using Linux conventions is hard to do, as this has a lot
to do with how drivers are implemented and in which order they are
executed. Note it was only a side thought of my mail, while the original
intent, an inconsistent numbering scheme, is still an issue.


-- 
coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.
      Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613
Email: info@coresystems.de  • http://www.coresystems.de/

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Jeroen Dekkers]

At Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:31:04 +0200,
Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> 
> * Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
> > * Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
> >   partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
>  
> Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
> 
> If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
> become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?

IIRC the BSDs, Solaris and GNU/Hurd start counting with 0 for their
disks, it might make sense to be consistent with those operating
systems.

Jeroen Dekkers

Re: GRUB 1.95 is released

[Robert Millan]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 10:51:43PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> At Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:31:04 +0200,
> Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> > 
> > * Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [061015 16:51]:
> > > * Number partitions from 1 instead of 0. For instance, the first
> > >   partition of "hd0" is now "hd0,1" but not "hd0,0".
> >  
> > Hm. What's the reason for being inconsistent here?
> > 
> > If changing the partition naming scheme, I would have thought it'd
> > become hd1,1. But why is the first disk 0 and the first partition 1?
> 
> IIRC the BSDs, Solaris and GNU/Hurd start counting with 0 for their
> disks, it might make sense to be consistent with those operating
> systems.

..and Linux starts counting with 'a' which is not closer to 1 than it is to 0
anyway.

-- 
Robert Millan

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