Re: grub.cfg and core.img getting out of sync

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:22:14AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > 
> > > What do people think about this general approach?
> > 
> > There is already a version hardcoded into the uncompressed part of
> > core.img.  See kern/i386/pc/startup.S.  Unfortunately, there is no
> > policy when the version should be updated.
> > 
> > But I'm fine with a separate file in /boot/grub if we decide that the
> > existing version in core.img cannot be used for that and we cannot keep
> > grub.cfg backward compatible.
> 
> The version in core.img would be fine if there were a way to extract it
> from userspace. It seems rather ugly to me to extract this using dd or
> od directly - also, presumably grub-mkconfig ought to be at least
> somewhat architecture-independent. Does this need a new tool?

This seems overengineered.  I'd rather integrate grub-install with
grub-mkconfig to ensure they're always run together, than have to deal
with a version number that has to be constantly upgraded.

Maintaining an ABI version number is a significant burden in the long
run.  We should think carefully before committing to it.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."