From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1JtOwS-0001Ld-Ee for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 11:18:56 -0400 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JtOwP-0001LL-NW for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 11:18:53 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JtOwN-0001L7-UK for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 11:18:53 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=43017 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JtOwN-0001L4-Ov for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 11:18:51 -0400 Received: from aybabtu.com ([69.60.117.155]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JtOwN-0005If-FO for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 11:18:51 -0400 Received: from [192.168.10.6] (helo=thorin) by aybabtu.com with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1JtOwL-00031p-7x for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 17:18:50 +0200 Received: from rmh by thorin with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1JtOvY-0006iE-Gs for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 May 2008 17:18:00 +0200 Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 17:18:00 +0200 From: Robert Millan To: The development of GRUB 2 Message-ID: <20080506151800.GA25697@thorin> References: <4807AA02.1020909@mail.berlios.de> <20080418132858.GH29226@thorin> <480A02F3.7000504@mail.berlios.de> <20080420100713.GA16764@thorin> <1208773866.29071.11.camel@dv> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <1208773866.29071.11.camel@dv> Organization: free as in freedom X-Message-Flag: Worried about Outlook viruses? Switch to Thunderbird! www.mozilla.com/thunderbird X-Debbugs-No-Ack: true User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. Subject: retiring device.map 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: Tue, 06 May 2008 15:18:54 -0000 On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 06:31:06AM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote: > > 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. I completely agree. How do we go about this? First of all we need support for labels, right? -- Robert Millan I know my rights; I want my phone call! What use is a phone call… if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.)