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Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie

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  Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-07-19 11:40 +0200
    Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-19 20:10 +0200
      Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2017-07-19 21:50 +0200
        Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2017-07-20 09:00 +0200
          Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-20 23:40 +0200
            Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Weaver <weaver@riseup.net> - 2017-07-20 23:40 +0200
              Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2017-07-21 10:20 +0200
      Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-07-19 22:30 +0200
        Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-20 23:50 +0200
          Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-07-21 07:30 +0200
    Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2017-07-19 20:40 +0200
      Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-20 23:50 +0200
        Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2017-07-21 04:20 +0200
          Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2017-07-21 10:40 +0200
          Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-22 11:00 +0200
      Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-07-21 07:20 +0200
        Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2017-07-21 08:40 +0200
          Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-07-21 13:00 +0200
          Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-22 11:10 +0200
            Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2017-07-22 15:00 +0200
              Re: Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-07-22 19:40 +0200

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#183883 — Setup Grub-Legacy on Jessie

Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can 
be imposable, I've been thinking about this for awhile now and how to 
solve this problem that Ubuntu does not have.

So I added trusty main to my Jessie repos and installed trusty grub and 
trusty grub-common, I had to do a force-install and an apt-hold on 
grub-common to keep it from getting upgraded.

And then I started grub and ran
#find /boot/grub/stage1
#root (hd0,0)
#setup (hd0)

I was half expecting it not to work cause I don't know anyone else who 
has tried this, but it worked and I booted it a few times until I was 
convinced it was working. :)

Questions or suggestions?

Cheers,
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

Debian Jessie - KDE 4.14.2 - Intel G3220 - EXT4 at sda7
Registered Linux User #380263

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#183902

Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can 
> be imposable,

Imposable ? What would impose it ?

(...)
> Questions or suggestions?

One question : why use GRUB legacy ?
One suggestion : upgrade.

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#183916

On 2017-07-19, Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:
> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can 
>> be imposable,
>
> Imposable ? What would impose it ?

I think he meant impossible. In fact, I read impossible (and only reread
the phrase and realized he'd written imposable because of your post).

> (...)
>> Questions or suggestions?
>
> One question : why use GRUB legacy ?
> One suggestion : upgrade.
>
>


-- 
“We’ll sit around talking about the good old days, when we wished that we were dead.”
--Samuel Beckett, speculating on the nature of the afterlife.

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#183956

On 2017-07-19, Curt <curty@free.fr> wrote:
> On 2017-07-19, Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:
>> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can 
>>> be imposable,
>>
>> Imposable ? What would impose it ?

> I think he meant impossible. In fact, I read impossible (and only reread
> the phrase and realized he'd written imposable because of your post).

I guess he did mean imposable (whatever that would mean--capable of being imposed,
but not necessarily imposed)? Or imposed?

Whatever sorry for the distraction.

>> (...)
>>> Questions or suggestions?
>>
>> One question : why use GRUB legacy ?
>> One suggestion : upgrade.
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
“We’ll sit around talking about the good old days, when we wished that we were dead.”
--Samuel Beckett, speculating on the nature of the afterlife.

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#184009

Le 20/07/2017 à 08:51, Curt a écrit :
> On 2017-07-19, Curt <curty@free.fr> wrote:
>> On 2017-07-19, Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:
>>> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can
>>>> be imposable,
>>>
>>> Imposable ? What would impose it ?
> 
>> I think he meant impossible. In fact, I read impossible (and only reread
>> the phrase and realized he'd written imposable because of your post).
> 
> I guess he did mean imposable (whatever that would mean--capable of being imposed,
> but not necessarily imposed)? Or imposed?

Neither does make sense to me...

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#184010

On 2017-07-21 07:29, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Le 20/07/2017 à 08:51, Curt a écrit :
>> On 2017-07-19, Curt <curty@free.fr> wrote:
>>> On 2017-07-19, Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:
>>>> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>>>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can
>>>>> be imposable,
>>>>
>>>> Imposable ? What would impose it ?
>>
>>> I think he meant impossible. In fact, I read impossible (and only reread
>>> the phrase and realized he'd written imposable because of your post).
>>
>> I guess he did mean imposable (whatever that would mean--capable of being imposed,
>> but not necessarily imposed)? Or imposed?
> 
> Neither does make sense to me...

Stop imposing this on me.

-- 
"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its 
government."
 -- Thomas Paine

Registered Linux User: 554515

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#184032

On 2017-07-20, Weaver <weaver@riseup.net> wrote:
> On 2017-07-21 07:29, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>> Le 20/07/2017 à 08:51, Curt a écrit :
>>> On 2017-07-19, Curt <curty@free.fr> wrote:
>>>> On 2017-07-19, Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:
>>>>> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>>>>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can
>>>>>> be imposable,
>>>>>
>>>>> Imposable ? What would impose it ?
>>>
>>>> I think he meant impossible. In fact, I read impossible (and only reread
>>>> the phrase and realized he'd written imposable because of your post).
>>>
>>> I guess he did mean imposable (whatever that would mean--capable of being imposed,
>>> but not necessarily imposed)? Or imposed?
>> 
>> Neither does make sense to me...
>
> Stop imposing this on me.
>
Imposable but no cigar.

-- 
“We’ll sit around talking about the good old days, when we wished that we were dead.”
--Samuel Beckett, speculating on the nature of the afterlife.

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#183921

On 07/19/2017 11:04 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can 
>> be imposable,
> 
> Imposable ? What would impose it ?

Debian grub-legacy setup is no longer supported, yet it can still be 
install so you can get a readable menu when you upgrade the kernel.

>> Questions or suggestions?
> 
> One question : why use GRUB legacy ?

I multi-boot 20 installed .deb systems on the computer is the reason why.

> One suggestion : upgrade.

Not an option, I would be screwing with a grub config file that's not 
designed to be readable by man and with 20 systems just updating grub-pc 
is unnecessary time consuming.  If I was running one or two systems 
grub-pc would be fine but even my laptops have 5 or more systems installed.
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - KDE 4.13.2 - Intel G3220 - EXT4 at sda1
Registered Linux User #380263

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#184011

Le 19/07/2017 à 22:20, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
> On 07/19/2017 11:04 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>> Le 19/07/2017 à 11:30, Jimmy Johnson a écrit :
>>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian 
>>> can be imposable,
>>
>> Imposable ? What would impose it ?
> 
> Debian grub-legacy setup is no longer supported, yet it can still be 
> install so you can get a readable menu when you upgrade the kernel.

That sounds contradictory with "imposable". Did you mean "impossible" ?

>> One question : why use GRUB legacy ?
> 
> I multi-boot 20 installed .deb systems on the computer is the reason why.

So what ? Can't GRUB 2 handle 20 different systems ?

>> One suggestion : upgrade.
> 
> Not an option, I would be screwing with a grub config file that's not 
> designed to be readable by man

Even though, grub.cfg is perfectly readable by man when you're used to 
it. I am a man and I can read it.

> and with 20 systems just updating grub-pc 
> is unnecessary time consuming.  If I was running one or two systems 
> grub-pc would be fine but even my laptops have 5 or more systems installed.

You don't have to use the auto-generated grub.cfg. You can write and 
maintain your own one manually.

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#184027

On 07/20/2017 02:46 PM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:

> You don't have to use the auto-generated grub.cfg. You can write and
> maintain your own one manually.

You can! Good for you!

Cheers,
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

Debian Jessie - KDE 4.14.2 - Intel G3220 - EXT4 at sda1
Registered Linux User #380263

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#183908

Jimmy Johnson composed on 2017-07-19 02:30 (UTC-0700):

> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can 
> be imposable, I've been thinking about this for awhile now and how to 
> solve this problem that Ubuntu does not have.

> So I added trusty main to my Jessie repos and installed trusty grub and 
> trusty grub-common, I had to do a force-install and an apt-hold on 
> grub-common to keep it from getting upgraded.

> And then I started grub and ran
> #find /boot/grub/stage1
> #root (hd0,0)
> #setup (hd0)

> I was half expecting it not to work cause I don't know anyone else who 
> has tried this, but it worked and I booted it a few times until I was 
> convinced it was working. :)

> Questions or suggestions?

I don't like that kind of repo mixing.

All my PCs are multiboot.

None of my PCs have any incarnation of Grub* installed on any MBR. Generic MBR
code works.[1]

The only OS installations here with Grub2 installed are *buntus, and I don't use
them much. I equate Grub2 to systemd, except that Grub2 is easier to avoid
having contaminate user experience.

All my other Linux installations have Grub Legacy installed to their /
filesystems, manually by me from openSUSE packages where the OS does not offer a
working package of it. Grub Legacy requires no scripts or filesystem mounting to
setup, and its menu.lst is magnitudes easier than Grub2's grub.cfg to manually
maintain. The / bootloader installations are mainly only used for loading
previous or test kernel versions.

All my PCs have a master boot partition, where Grub Legacy from openSUSE is
installed. openSUSE's Grub Legacy has been kept adequately maintained for my
needs, which means EXT4 filesystems are fully supported. OTOH, Debian's Grub
Legacy is broken WRT EXT4, OK with EXT2/3. These master boot partitions are
configured manually to load every Linux installation's default kernel, plus
chainloading each, and chainloading DOS/OS2/Windows (if applicable), plus memtest.

IOW, where Grub Legacy can still be used, it's far preferable. If it works for
you, enjoy. :-)

[1]
https://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up_a_working_GRUB.3F
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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#184012

Le 19/07/2017 à 20:33, Felix Miata a écrit :
> 
> Grub Legacy requires no scripts or filesystem mounting to
> setup, and its menu.lst is magnitudes easier than Grub2's grub.cfg to manually
> maintain.

This is your opinion. I beg to differ. Once you are used to it, manually 
maintaining grub.cfg is rather easy.

> All my PCs have a master boot partition, where Grub Legacy from openSUSE is
> installed. openSUSE's Grub Legacy has been kept adequately maintained for my
> needs, which means EXT4 filesystems are fully supported. OTOH, Debian's Grub
> Legacy is broken WRT EXT4, OK with EXT2/3.

Because the upstream GRUB legacy does not support ext4, not even 
mentioning newer filesystems such as btrfs, or features such as LVM, 
RAID (no, GRUB legacy has no full software RAID support).

It is SUSE which patched its GRUB legacy package to support ext4. IMO, 
it was not the right thing to do. It caused confusion among people (does 
GRUB legacy support ext4 or not ?) and delayed the adoption of GRUB 2.

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#184021

Pascal Hambourg composed on 2017-07-20 23:40 (UTC+0200):

> Felix Miata composed:

>> Grub Legacy requires no scripts or filesystem mounting to
>> setup, and its menu.lst is magnitudes easier than Grub2's grub.cfg to manually
>> maintain.

> This is your opinion.

Grub2 setup can be run without mounting the target filesystem?

(boot anything that has Grub Legacy available in the path)
# grub
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1	# verify current state is as expected
grub> root (hd0,6)		# specify installation source
grub> setup (hd0,2)		# make a primary bootable
(ready to boot third primary partition on first HD)

Do similarly simple Grub2 instructions exist? I've never seen any, and I don't
see how they could be with entirely different syntax between partition numbering
and disk numbering.

OTOH, every Debian kernel installation, plus initrd regenerations, fill my
screens with complaints like

dpkg: warning: version 'cur' has bad syntax: version number does not start with
digit
dpkg: warning: version 'prv' has bad syntax: version number does not start with
digit

Bootloaders don't need numbers in kernel names. Boot menus don't need updates at
kernel installation times when suitable generic symlinks are maintained.

> I beg to differ. Once you are used to it, manually
> maintaining grub.cfg is rather easy.

In your opinion. I find smaller files using volume labels easier to maintain
than larger ones with humanly immemorable UUIDs. I don't see how files 10X as
large that additionally involve scripting can be preferable. It might be of
small consequence on one or a few installations, but with my many I go with
skipping the confusion of a poorly compatible mixture, plus what ain't broke
don't need fixin.

>> All my PCs have a master boot partition, where Grub Legacy from openSUSE is
>> installed. openSUSE's Grub Legacy has been kept adequately maintained for my
>> needs, which means EXT4 filesystems are fully supported. OTOH, Debian's Grub
>> Legacy is broken WRT EXT4, OK with EXT2/3.

> Because the upstream GRUB legacy does not support ext4,
Since when has there been any upstream Grub Legacy? Upstream restarted from
scratch, a whole new set of requirements and bugs to go along with incompatible
menu and setup, a very different bootloader deserving of a very different name.

> not even 
> mentioning newer filesystems such as btrfs, or features such as LVM, 
> RAID (no, GRUB legacy has no full software RAID support).

Some people are satisfied to keep what works working and let others do the
experimenting. WRT filesystems I don't experiment; my experimental efforts go
elsewhere. I have multiple PCs running RAID, all of which boot using Grub, none
of which have Grub on MBR.

> It is SUSE which patched its GRUB legacy package to support ext4. 

SLE apparently had and has a paid support base using Grub Legacy and wanting
EXT4 support, so because of the intertwining of SLE and openSUSE, openSUSE users
benefited from it as well.

Unlike some other distros, SLE/openSUSE maintained, and still maintain, though
incompletely (their current installers do not provide an option to install Grub
Legacy, so it must be installed later if it's wanted), keeping what works
working for people who don't need everything that every upstream deems
improvement, by continuing to provide two usable Grub environments.

> IMO, it was not the right thing to do. It caused confusion among people (does 
> GRUB legacy support ext4 or not ?) and delayed the adoption of GRUB 2.
 Delaying adoption can be a very good thing, a selling point. Debian does it.

It's only natural to expect a distro that wants to keep its users happy to fix,
as available resources permit, known breakage that upstreams refuse to fix.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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#184034

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 10:11:10PM -0400, Felix Miata wrote:
[cut]
>
>OTOH, every Debian kernel installation, plus initrd regenerations, fill my
>screens with complaints like
>
>dpkg: warning: version 'cur' has bad syntax: version number does not start with
>digit
>dpkg: warning: version 'prv' has bad syntax: version number does not start with
>digit

I've had this issue in the past due to locally-created packages which
don't follow the Debian Guidelines. I'm not saying this is your
situation, but merely an anecdote - back when I used to play with
kernel-pkg (for building debian packages from vanilla kernel sources),
I'd give the resulting packages versions such as "venus.1", "athena.2"
etc (that is, hostname plus a version). dpkg didn't like that. I found
that the errors persisted even after removing the packages. The answer
was that the memory of the packages persisted in
/var/lib/dpkg/available. Removing the relevant stanzas from the file
silenced the error.


-- 
For more information, please reread.

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#184062

Le 21/07/2017 à 04:11, Felix Miata a écrit :
> Pascal Hambourg composed on 2017-07-20 23:40 (UTC+0200):
> 
>> Felix Miata composed:
> 
>>> Grub Legacy requires no scripts or filesystem mounting to
>>> setup, and its menu.lst is magnitudes easier than Grub2's grub.cfg to manually
>>> maintain.
> 
>> This is your opinion.
> 
> Grub2 setup can be run without mounting the target filesystem?

If by "target filesystem" you mean the filesystem containing the boot 
directory (/boot by default or specified by the --boot-directory option) 
then no. But I fail to see how this ability would be an advantage. I 
trust the OS filesystem driver more than GRUB installer when it comes to 
writing files to a filesystem.

> (boot anything that has Grub Legacy available in the path)
> # grub
> grub> find /boot/grub/stage1	# verify current state is as expected
> grub> root (hd0,6)		# specify installation source
> grub> setup (hd0,2)		# make a primary bootable
> (ready to boot third primary partition on first HD)
> 
> Do similarly simple Grub2 instructions exist?

GRUB 2 just has a single grub-install command.

>> I beg to differ. Once you are used to it, manually
>> maintaining grub.cfg is rather easy.
> 
> In your opinion. I find smaller files using volume labels easier to maintain
> than larger ones with humanly immemorable UUIDs.

You can just use all that (labels and small files) with GRUB 2 too.

>> Because the upstream GRUB legacy does not support ext4,
>
> Since when has there been any upstream Grub Legacy?

Since the beginning.

> Upstream restarted from
> scratch, a whole new set of requirements and bugs to go along with incompatible
> menu and setup, a very different bootloader deserving of a very different name.

So what ? We all know they are very different.

>> not even
>> mentioning newer filesystems such as btrfs, or features such as LVM,
>> RAID (no, GRUB legacy has no full software RAID support).
> 
> Some people are satisfied to keep what works working

Until it doesn't work any more because something else changed and is not 
supported any more by the old GRUB legacy.

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#184026

On 07/19/2017 11:33 AM, Felix Miata wrote:
> Jimmy Johnson composed on 2017-07-19 02:30 (UTC-0700):
>
>> Some of you may already know that setting up grub-legacy on Debian can
>> be imposable, I've been thinking about this for awhile now and how to
>> solve this problem that Ubuntu does not have.
>
>> So I added trusty main to my Jessie repos and installed trusty grub and
>> trusty grub-common, I had to do a force-install and an apt-hold on
>> grub-common to keep it from getting upgraded.
>
>> And then I started grub and ran
>> #find /boot/grub/stage1
>> #root (hd0,0)
>> #setup (hd0)
>
>> I was half expecting it not to work cause I don't know anyone else who
>> has tried this, but it worked and I booted it a few times until I was
>> convinced it was working. :)
>
>> Questions or suggestions?
>
> I don't like that kind of repo mixing.

I didn't care for doing it..But I wanted Jessie on sda1 where I keep my 
menu.lst and keep things simple.

> All my PCs are multiboot.

Do you test operating systems?

> None of my PCs have any incarnation of Grub* installed on any MBR. Generic MBR
> code works.[1]

And you can still use a menu to boot your systems?

> The only OS installations here with Grub2 installed are *buntus, and I don't use
> them much. I equate Grub2 to systemd, except that Grub2 is easier to avoid
> having contaminate user experience.
>
> All my other Linux installations have Grub Legacy installed to their /
> filesystems, manually by me from openSUSE packages where the OS does not offer a
> working package of it.

That's what I did..You said you didn't like it and I agree.

> Grub Legacy requires no scripts or filesystem mounting to
> setup, and its menu.lst is magnitudes easier than Grub2's grub.cfg to manually
> maintain. The / bootloader installations are mainly only used for loading
> previous or test kernel versions.
>
> All my PCs have a master boot partition, where Grub Legacy from openSUSE is
> installed. openSUSE's Grub Legacy has been kept adequately maintained for my
> needs, which means EXT4 filesystems are fully supported. OTOH, Debian's Grub
> Legacy is broken WRT EXT4, OK with EXT2/3. These master boot partitions are
> configured manually to load every Linux installation's default kernel, plus
> chainloading each, and chainloading DOS/OS2/Windows (if applicable), plus memtest.
>
> IOW, where Grub Legacy can still be used, it's far preferable. If it works for
> you, enjoy. :-)
>
> [1]
> https://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up_a_working_GRUB.3F

I don't have anything against SUSE, but not something I would bother 
with at this time, it was the first Linux I installed back in '94 after 
installing DOS, Windows, SCO and Novell, I was installing every piece of 
software I could get my hands on, I installed my first boot sector virus 
then and learned how to remove them too in '94.

Why do you think it would have been better to have used grub from SUSE 
than from Ubuntu?

Cheers,
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

Debian Jessie - KDE 4.14.2 - Intel G3220 - EXT4 at sda1
Registered Linux User #380263

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#184029

Jimmy Johnson composed on 2017-07-20 2:13 (UTC-0700):

> Felix Miata wrote:

> ...I wanted Jessie on sda1 where I keep my 
> menu.lst and keep things simple.

"Simple" I find impossible in multiboot of any serious extent. Closest thing
there can be to simple is a master bootloader on a primary partition which only
the admin ever touches, and is never ever mounted to /boot.

>> All my PCs are multiboot.

> Do you test operating systems?

Yes. I have two functional PCs with as few as 4 OS installed, both using
software RAID. Most PCs here have upwards of 10 OS, at least two with upwards of
25, of which one has more than 40.

>> None of my PCs have any incarnation of Grub* installed on any MBR. Generic MBR
>> code works.[1]

> And you can still use a menu to boot your systems?

Given multiboot, I can't imagine why you would ask.

> Why do you think it would have been better to have used grub from SUSE 
> than from Ubuntu?

Grub Legacy? Grub2? When, 7-10 years ago? Trusty's? (and why did you choose
Jessie for a Haswell?)

I thought Grub Legacy was last available from Ubuntu too many moons ago to
consider for any recent distros. OTOH, Grub Legacy with Gfxboot from openSUSE is
a dream for multiboot, and supports EXT4, which Debian's does not, which in turn
probably means Ubuntu's does not. With a new HD and a new PC, I initialize Grub
using Knoppix, but once I have an openSUSE on it, I switch it.

Since I rarely actually use Grub2, I have no basis to suggest whether openSUSE's
might be preferable to Ubuntu's. Does Ubuntu's have something Jessie's doesn't
that you need?

To be clear, in MBR systems I only ever install DOS or OS/2 on a primary
partition. All other OS go on logicals. Except for one ancient PC that has only
WinXP on it (which I did not install), at least one primary is always EXT2 with
Grub Legacy and little else, unless the disk is a pure data-only disk, in which
case its MBR sector is empty but for the partition table.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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#184040

On 07/20/2017 11:34 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> Jimmy Johnson composed on 2017-07-20 2:13 (UTC-0700):
>
>> Felix Miata wrote:
>
>> ...I wanted Jessie on sda1 where I keep my
>> menu.lst and keep things simple.
>
> "Simple" I find impossible in multiboot of any serious extent. Closest thing
> there can be to simple is a master bootloader on a primary partition which only
> the admin ever touches, and is never ever mounted to /boot.
>
>>> All my PCs are multiboot.
>
>> Do you test operating systems?
>
> Yes. I have two functional PCs with as few as 4 OS installed, both using
> software RAID. Most PCs here have upwards of 10 OS, at least two with upwards of
> 25, of which one has more than 40.
>
>>> None of my PCs have any incarnation of Grub* installed on any MBR. Generic MBR
>>> code works.[1]
>
>> And you can still use a menu to boot your systems?
>
> Given multiboot, I can't imagine why you would ask.

Okay, you use a separate partition to install grub, end of story.

Cheers,
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

Debian Jessie - KDE 4.14.2 - Intel G3220 - EXT4 at sda7
Registered Linux User #380263

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#184063

Le 21/07/2017 à 08:34, Felix Miata a écrit :
> 
> To be clear, in MBR systems I only ever install DOS or OS/2 on a primary
> partition. All other OS go on logicals. Except for one ancient PC that has only
> WinXP on it (which I did not install), at least one primary is always EXT2 with
> Grub Legacy and little else, unless the disk is a pure data-only disk, in which
> case its MBR sector is empty but for the partition table.

If this disk is bootable by BIOS, then its MBR must contain a boot 
program, at least the DOS/Windows standard MBR program or compatible 
(such as the ones installed by install-mbr or lilo -M).

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#184074

Pascal Hambourg composed on 2017-07-22 11:03 (UTC+0200):

> Felix Miata composed:

>> To be clear, in MBR systems I only ever install DOS or OS/2 on a primary
>> partition. All other OS go on logicals. Except for one ancient PC that has only
>> WinXP on it (which I did not install), at least one primary is always EXT2 with
>> Grub Legacy and little else, unless the disk is a pure data-only disk, in which
>> case its MBR sector is empty but for the partition table.

> If this disk is bootable by BIOS, then its MBR must contain a boot 
> program, at least the DOS/Windows standard MBR program or compatible 
> (such as the ones installed by install-mbr or lilo -M).

By definition, a data-only disk is not bootable. On my data-only disks I use a
sector editor if necessary to fill the first 446 bytes of its first sector with
nulls.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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