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

[Paul Elliott <pelliott@io.com>]

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On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 12:25:30PM -0500, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> 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?

No, usually the first hard disk is hd0, the second hard disk
is hd1, and the usb sticks come after that. At least that is
how it works under my computer. Usually it is because the number
of hard disks differ that causes you not to know which device
the usb stick is.

The Problem does not have to involve usbsticks. One can imagine
a situation in which to device one is booting from is always
the first scsi disk. But some computers have one or more IDE
drives wich are recognized by the bios as hd0, hd1, ect.

The Fedora/RedHat kernels/initrd have this feature where you can
specify the root partition to the kernel/initrd by volume label. You
can say 'root=LABEL=/' to tell the kernel to find the partition with the
label '/' and use that as the root partition. This feature does not
require LVN. The kernel/initrd will check all the partitons and find
the one lableled '/'.

But this does not have anything to do with how one
specifies partitions to grub. But perhaps grub should adopt a similar
feature.


> 
> > 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.
> 

This seems a long way to drag the cat around the barn. Or this
would be like kicking dead whales down the beach. One should
not have to invoke the complexity of LVN just so one can specify
partitions.


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

-- 
Paul Elliott                       1(512)837-1096
pelliott@io.com                    PMB 181, 11900 Metric Blvd Suite J
http://www.io.com/~pelliott/pme/   Austin TX 78758-3117

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