[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Boot loaders in core/base
Matthew Gyurgyik
pyther at pyther.net
Sun Nov 21 00:19:58 CET 2010
On 11/20/2010 05:27 AM, Pierre Schmitz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> while reviewing the core rebuild list I wondered if we should think
> about chaining our default boot loader. Note: that wont affect existing
> setups and people will still be able to use whatever they like.
>
> 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.
>
> Grub2 is currently in extra. Upstream development is still in flux.
> Imho its quite heavy and complex.
>
> 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.
>
> Summing up my suggestion for some time in the future would be:
> * move extlinux/syslinux to core/base
> * move grub1 to extra/multilib and remove it from base group
> * keep grub2 in extra
> * maybe also move lilo to extra
> * of course keep all of them on the install cd
>
> What do you think about this? At some point it might not be
> sane/possible to keep grub1 as our default boot loader.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Pierre
>
I was thinking about how we could integrate extlinux into the installer
and have suggested creating an additional package called extlinux. This
package would would include an example config and a few *.c32 file
needed to make the config work.
As a result, the installer would just have to modify the example config
and run extlinux --install /boot/syslinux. As an added bonus, it makes
things easier for the end user (/boot/syslinux doesn't need to be
created and *.c32 files don't need to be copied to /boot/syslinux).
I have all the juicy details and an explanation here:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/21766
~pyther
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