Re: [SLUG] LILO or GRUB - request for comments

From: Derek Glidden (dglidden@illusionary.com)
Date: Fri Oct 11 2002 - 10:58:58 EDT


On Thu, 2002-10-10 at 23:16, Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 11:01:10PM -0400, Smitty wrote:
>
> > I request comments from those who have used both boot loaders as to
> > advantages
> > and disadvantages.
> > Smitty
>
> Lilo is relatively inflexible when it comes to recovering from a
> mis-boot. Grub provides its own command line and command set for
> tinkering while/as you boot. Also, lilo must be re-run every time a
> change is made to a kernel, etc., because it has to refigure offsets and
> such for booting. Grub does not need to be rerun when changes are made.
> It understands ext2 (and other) filesystems natively, and so can find
> the file without having to have it compiled into the bootloader.

GRUB definitely has the higher geek-cool-factor of the two. It's more
like a boot monitor for x86 systems (like you might find on a Sun
machine) than a simple bootstrap loader.

The advantage of NOT having to hardcode the kernel images into the
loader is almost worth using it just for that, (how many of us have
copied over new kernel images and three seconds after rebooting smacked
ourselves in the forehead and exclaimed "Doh!" because we forgot to
rerun LILO) but there are lots of other advantages, not the least of
which is GRUB's ability to read/boot from many other filesystems than
ext2.
 
> That said, though, I still run lilo, because I haven't taken the time to
> learn how to edit grub's config file. ;-}

yep, that's the biggest problem with GRUB: you can't just write a couple
lines in a config file and do "grub -v" and make it work.

It's not a LOT more complicated than that if you have absolutely
"standard" equipment, but if your setup is just a little bit weird (I
had a helluva time getting it working on a SCSI box) it is a serious
PIA, particularly compared to how easy it is to make LILO work. The
config syntax isn't exactly arcane, but it took me a little while to
figure out how everything related to each other.

It's best to look at an existing, working GRUB setup and copy it and use
it verbatim until you understand how it works. (That's what I did - I
installed a recent RedHat, which can set up GRUB instead of LILO on
install, and then fiddled with it until I felt comfortable installing it
on my Debian boxes.)

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval 

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