[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Boot loaders in core/base

[Thomas Bächler]

Am 20.11.2010 15:25, schrieb Heiko Baums:
> Am Sat, 20 Nov 2010 11:27:35 +0100
> schrieb Pierre Schmitz <pierre at archlinux.de>:
> 
>> ATM. we have grub1 in core/base and install that by default. The
>> problem is that this project is virtually dead for a long time now and
>> also not available on x86_64. Technically it has to be in the multilib
>> repo.
> 
> I'm running a x86_64 system and have grub1 installed without any lib32
> dependencies. So, of course it's available on x86_64. Why shall this be
> moved to [multilib]?

Grub does not build for x86_64.

/sbin/grub: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV),
statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped

Technically, this is very un-Arch-way.

>> An alternative successor would be extlinux from the syslinux package.
>> It's very simple, easy to configure, actively maintained and reliable.
>> Sure, it only supports booting from ext* and btrfs afaik but to be
>> honest, if you use any other FS you should have a separate /boot even
>> when using grub.
> 
> This would be a massive regression because there are several people who
> are using reiserfs and other filesystems.

I don't even know if installing a bootloader on reiser, jfs or xfs is
safe. Just because grub does it, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

> The best would be if every available bootloader would be moved to
> [core] and supported by AIF, so that the user can decide during the
> installation which bootloader fits best to him and which bootloader
> shall be installed, because there's currently no bootloader which can do
> everything.

I don't think it's a good idea to maintain that many bootloaders in
core. grub-legacy is unmaintained, lilo has a very old-school design and
major disadvantages. We could keep grub2, but it seems it isn't really
stable yet.

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