Some GRUB ideas

Some GRUB ideas

[Robert Millan]

Hi there,

I'm one of the folks volunteering as mentors for this year's GRUB GSoC
participation.  Okuji asked us to provide ideas and notify this list about
them.

Our full list of ideas is hosted at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-soc.html

The following have been added as new ideas for this year:

  - USB support (UHCI + keyboard/storage drivers)
  - ATA (finish pATA driver + SATA / AHCI)
  - Accessing encrypted partitions (LUKS)
  - Localisation infrastructure

More details about them are available at the URL above.

-- 
Robert Millan

<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What use is a phone call… if you are unable to speak?
(as seen on /.)

Re: Some GRUB ideas

[komputes]

Hi Robert,

I had a few more ideas for GRUB that may be useful.

A way for the user to know which hard drives/partitions are available to 
the computer in a "(hd0,0)" format which can then be used in a menu.lst 
file. This would greatly save time and confusion in the grub 
configuration process. This would be like a devices.map, but way more 
useful. I would imagine it would look like this:

$ grub --pitty-da-foo #this command doesn't exist (...yet)
Checking disks...

                                 Mem  Used
(hd0)      /dev/sda
           (hd0,0)   /dev/sda1  50GB  25%
           (hd0,1)   /dev/sda2  50GB  25%

(hd1)   /dev/sdb
           (hd1,0)   /dev/sdb1  50GB  25%
           (hd1,1)   /dev/sdb2  50GB  25%


Something like that would be nice. Or at least a passing mention in 
menu.lst that Grub starts counting from 0 not 1 in its drive/partition 
designations--i.e. (hd0,1) = /dev/sda2, etc. That confuses a lot of 
newcommers to linux, who would appreciate a command that will help them 
select or at least see how to correctly transport hard disk "locations" 
from a shell to a menu.lst. I just thought I would bring this to the 
attention of GRUB developers to see if this can be included in an 
upcoming version/update.

-k

Robert Millan wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I'm one of the folks volunteering as mentors for this year's GRUB GSoC
> participation.  Okuji asked us to provide ideas and notify this list about
> them.
>
> Our full list of ideas is hosted at:
>
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-soc.html
>
> The following have been added as new ideas for this year:
>
>   - USB support (UHCI + keyboard/storage drivers)
>   - ATA (finish pATA driver + SATA / AHCI)
>   - Accessing encrypted partitions (LUKS)
>   - Localisation infrastructure
>
> More details about them are available at the URL above.
>
>   

Re: Some GRUB ideas

[Colin D Bennett]

komputes wrote:
> Something like that would be nice. Or at least a passing mention in 
> menu.lst that Grub starts counting from 0 not 1 in its drive/partition 
> designations--i.e. (hd0,1) = /dev/sda2, etc. That confuses a lot of 
> newcommers to linux, who would appreciate a command that will help 
> them select or at least see how to correctly transport hard disk 
> "locations" from a shell to a menu.lst. I just thought I would bring 
> this to the attention of GRUB developers to see if this can be 
> included in an upcoming version/update.
I like your idea -- that would have come in very handy for me many times 
before.

Note that in GRUB 2, partition numbering has been changed to begin at 1.
See: http://grub.enbug.org/grub.cfg

Colin

Re: Some GRUB ideas

[komputes]

You're probably right, although the focus of my question/feature request 
is on the (hd0,0) syntax and not on the device file. I was thinking it 
could prompt devices.map for the drive names. Grub can't use /dev/sda1 
style syntax, you are correct, and I can't think of a logical workaround 
other than that.

That being said, it would still be useful for the user to be able to see 
what drive a grub has access to. Going back to the basic concept of the 
request which was to simplify grub for the new user by displaying which 
hard drives/partitions are available for grub to boot from (in (hd0,0) 
syntax). This could help the user easily create a menu.lst from the grub 
prompt/shell/menu.

-k

Neil Jerram wrote:
> komputes <komputes@gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> $ grub --pitty-da-foo #this command doesn't exist (...yet)
>> Checking disks...
>>
>>                                 Mem  Used
>> (hd0)      /dev/sda
>>           (hd0,0)   /dev/sda1  50GB  25%
>>           (hd0,1)   /dev/sda2  50GB  25%
>>
>> (hd1)   /dev/sdb
>>           (hd1,0)   /dev/sdb1  50GB  25%
>>           (hd1,1)   /dev/sdb2  50GB  25%
>>     
>
> Just a thought: but if Grub could do that, couldn't it just accept the
> "/dev/sda1"-style syntax everywhere?
>
> Regards,
>         Neil
>
>
>   

Re: Some GRUB ideas

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 09:57 -0400, komputes wrote:
> You're probably right, although the focus of my question/feature request 
> is on the (hd0,0) syntax and not on the device file. I was thinking it 
> could prompt devices.map for the drive names. Grub can't use /dev/sda1 
> style syntax, you are correct, and I can't think of a logical workaround 
> other than that.
> 
> That being said, it would still be useful for the user to be able to see 
> what drive a grub has access to. Going back to the basic concept of the 
> request which was to simplify grub for the new user by displaying which 
> hard drives/partitions are available for grub to boot from (in (hd0,0) 
> syntax). This could help the user easily create a menu.lst from the grub 
> prompt/shell/menu.

If we are would to do things easy for users, I'd go for labels.  The
"search" command can set variables to partitions with the given labels.
And perhaps GRUB could be enhanced to support direct references to
partitions by labels, e.g. (:fedora)

Please note that (hd0) is BIOS specific.  It's won't be available if the
ata module is loaded.  It won't be available on non-PC systems.  Even on
the same PC, when loading from a different device, the device numbers
can shift, yet it would be desirable that a configuration file on the
hard drive can still be used by GRUB loaded from a CD or a flash drive.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin