Am Sat, 20 Nov 2010 11:27:35 +0100 schrieb Pierre Schmitz <pierre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>: > 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]? > 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. And what has a separate /boot partition to do with the bootloader and the filesystem? You can use almost every filesystem on the /boot partition. 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. Depending on the partition scheme and the used filesystem a different bootloader is needed. And simultaneously every filesystem related package incl. btrfs-utils e.g. should be moved to [core] and supported by AIF, too. So that the user can decide during the installation how he wants to partition and format his drives and which filesystem he wants to use. > Summing up my suggestion for some time in the future would be: > * move extlinux/syslinux to core/base Good idea. > * move grub1 to extra/multilib and remove it from base group Bad idea and doesn't make much sense until there is a real equivalent alternative. It's still the most used bootloader I guess. > * keep grub2 in extra Should go to [core], too. > * maybe also move lilo to extra Not the best idea, too. > * of course keep all of them on the install cd Good idea again. But on the install CD there are only [core] packages as far as I know which makes sense. So all these packages should be moved to [core]. > What do you think about this? At some point it might not be > sane/possible to keep grub1 as our default boot loader. But I don't see this point, yet. It will be sometime in the future when there's a real alternative which can boot from every possible partition scheme and filesystem. Heiko
