I officially love LILO!

fflarex · 2010-04-11 22:10:59

So a few weeks ago I tried updating grub2 on my machine to fix a few minor glitches I was having with an older version. To make a long story short, it left my system unbootable and (for some reason) unable to downgrade again due to the install scripts not understanding my rather complex LVM/LUKS setup.

So for the past few weeks I have been using kexec as my bootloader. Yes, you read that right. I have been chrooting into my system from a livecd and using kexec to boot up. Every. Single. Boot.
All the while I have been trying to fix grub2 and wade through its awful documentation.

Then today for no particular reason I decided to give lilo a whirl. Within 10 minutes and after reading only about 3 paragraphs of documentation my system is bootable again! I am absolutely astounded that this little piece of deprecated software was able to handle my cutting edge logical volumes and disk encryption. It took so little effort from me, all while being simpler than both grub1 and grub2.

tomk · 2010-04-11 22:54:24

Whatever works for you....

However, you kinda skipped over the whole "unable to go back to grub1" thing there. Things always break "for some reason" - the typical Archer likes to find that reason, and then work out a fix.

Your choice, of course - glad you got up and running again.

fflarex · 2010-04-11 23:15:50

I did skip over that part in my rant, but I definitely did not skip it when I was trying to fix my system. GRUB 1 wouldn't work because my /boot partition is on LVM. GRUB 1.96 was working fine before this whole fiasco, but when I tried downgrading back to it something was different. Despite a LOT of digging and googling, I still don't know what exactly was different, but I couldn't get it installed using the same procedure I originally used to get it on there in the first place. GRUB 1.98 wouldn't work because the install scripts didn't yet support LVM or LUKS.

It's not so much that skipped over it, as much as it is giving up after weeks of failure and having an unbootable system and dealing with horrid documentation. The whole time I kept wondering why a bootloader even needed to read a filesystem, unaware that LILO didn't need to at all.

anrxc · 2010-04-11 23:59:20

While we are talking about LILO, I was wondering about it recently - can it be installed from the Arch installer directly? I think it was available some 2 years ago when I last saw the installer.

Last week I did another install and at the boot loader setup LILO was mentioned as an alternative to Grub but the actual menu option was missing. I had to; switch tty, install lilo, bind mount proc/sys/dev, chroot, write lilo.conf from scratch and install it manually. Not very friendly, so I was surprised... and as this thread proves LILO it still very useful, and has a user base.

Last edited by anrxc (2010-04-12 00:37:39)

Acecero · 2010-04-12 00:32:17

@anrxc: you might want to get Dieter@be's opinion on that.

sHyLoCk · 2010-04-12 08:54:33

Acecero wrote:

@anrxc: you might want to get Dieter@be's opinion on that.

Or check out tpowa's archboot. I used his script for ArchBang and replaced grub-legacy with GRUB2. See if you can implement dolilo() in AIF.

Last edited by sHyLoCk (2010-04-12 09:16:45)

tomk · 2010-04-12 09:06:49

fflarex - OK, my mistake. I thought you were talking about a grub-legacy to grub2 update, will read more carefully next time.

Dieter@be · 2010-04-12 11:07:47

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14424

JohannesSM64 · 2010-04-12 11:39:39

Suckless.org also like lilo, and they say "maybe we will start maintaining it"

fflarex · 2010-04-12 14:12:07

@JohannesSM64: That's actually what prompted me to even consider LILO.

pseudonomous · 2010-04-13 03:13:25

This is an interesting thread, it really has me wondering "what can grub 2 do that lilo can't?", since one of the few user-visible improvements of grub2 is supposed to be (apparently not yet implemented) LVM and RAID booting support.

.:B:. · 2010-04-13 06:20:11

I personally find GRUB to be a lot more flexible than LILO. Like, the difference between recovering when you messed up your bootloader's configuration or not without having to resort to booting from a CD.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-11 22:10:59

I officially love LILO!

#2 2010-04-11 22:54:24

Re: I officially love LILO!

#3 2010-04-11 23:15:50

Re: I officially love LILO!

#4 2010-04-11 23:59:20

Re: I officially love LILO!

#5 2010-04-12 00:32:17

Re: I officially love LILO!

#6 2010-04-12 08:54:33

Re: I officially love LILO!

#7 2010-04-12 09:06:49

Re: I officially love LILO!

#8 2010-04-12 11:07:47

Re: I officially love LILO!

#9 2010-04-12 11:39:39

Re: I officially love LILO!

#10 2010-04-12 14:12:07

Re: I officially love LILO!

#11 2010-04-13 03:13:25

Re: I officially love LILO!

#12 2010-04-13 06:20:11

Re: I officially love LILO!

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