On Sun, 2010-08-29 at 21:31 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote: > On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:20:20 -0400 (EDT), Ben Hutchings wrote: > > On Fri, 2010-08-27 at 09:50 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote: > >> [...] > >> Personally, I think that the requirement to maintain symlinks, if used, > >> is implicit in the purpose of the boot loader hook script. > >> [...] > > > > After thinking about this some more and actually trying to implement the > > hook scripts, I think I agree. These symlinks are horrible and by > > default we should not create them. As a stopgap, boot loader packages > > may create and then use the links, but I would much prefer that they > > construct a menu of all installed kernel versions, as GRUB and extlinux > > do. > > Hmm. Well, I agree that the approach taken by grub-legacy and extlinux > is more flexible. It allows more than two kernels to be bootable. > But boot loaders such as lilo and zipl have historically used > symlinks, and the symlink maintenance logic in my generic boot loader > hook scripts, > http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/kernel/postinst.d/zz-bootloader and > http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/kernel/postrm.d/zz-bootloader, > isn't really that complex. I'm curious as to why you consider symlinks > to be "horrible".
Because of the limitation to two versions, arbitrarily designated 'current' and 'old'; the fact that they could be in /, /boot, or even configured to be elsewhere; and the problem of stale links. > For now, on my own systems, I have extracted the symlink maintenance > logic from the above generic boot loader hook scripts and have created > new hook scripts which I call zy-symlinks. It allows me to use the > new boot loader packages with their kernel hook scripts which only > invoke the boot loader installer without modifying them. I also > have my own generic initramfs hook script which I use with zipl, > http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/initramfs/post-update.d/bootloader. > (By the way, I like the way you were able to avoid a bashism, > namely substring expansion, by using a case statement in lilo's > initramfs hook. Very clever!) > > But Debian clearly needs to do *something* about this problem > *somewhere*. I met Colin Watson last night and he said that he (as GRUB maintainer) and Daniel Baumann (as syslinux maintainer) had discussed writing a common boot loader policy. Due to the interaction with kernel packages and initramfs builders, I think we could combine this with the extension of the kernel and initramfs hooks policy. I don't think this urgently needs to be fixed before squeeze, as it is only affects unofficial kernel packages. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
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