Arch Linux

RedArcher

Member

From: South Africa

Registered: 2009-09-03

Posts: 139

A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

Greetings!

I did not read the wiki, because I ask here for private experiences of people here.

I have had to make modifications with GRUB and learn some more of the boot and kernel software.

I wonder, how many of you, who read this post, have multiple entries in GRUB with different kernel parameters, if that is at all possible, and I suppose that it should be possible.

Entries of different kernels, or different kernel versions and entries of different GRUB (i.e. boot) configurations.

I think, that such additional entries would be useful, specifically as fallback options.

Last edited by RedArcher (Yesterday 08:00:13)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,232

Re: A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

Not only is it possible, it is common.   I generally am not one to say RTFM, but read the fine manual.  Then ask.

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seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 59,084

Re: A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

For grub specifically, I'd actually recommend to rtfw - "read the fucking wiki", cause writing grub.cfg manually will be a lot of reading and /etc/default/grub is only "documented" in that file.

And the personal experience of 99.9% of users will be that grub can feel complex, but there's little that you cannot do with it - if you can figure how to
Multiple boot entries is however absolute standard.

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kermit63

Member

Registered: 2018-07-04

Posts: 259

Re: A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

My system is configured to boot with EFISTUB, systemd-boot and GRUB. Admittedly, GRUB is way more complex than the other 2, but is still my go-to bootloader since it is the only one that allows me to boot directly from ISO files thus far.

This is a wonderful feature for a lazy old man like me whenever I have to arch-chroot into my installation after doing something stupid to my system.

And of course, I had to add custom entries to GRUB to make it happen.

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Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,345

Website

Re: A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

I'm booting with a UKI so I have to edit /etc/kernel/cmdline then regenerate the image to change parameters. The fun bit is that if the change stops the system booting I have to reach for the live ISO. Yay.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (Today 06:50:51)

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RedArcher

Member

From: South Africa

Registered: 2009-09-03

Posts: 139

Re: A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

I will read the manual.

This is a wonderful feature for a lazy old man like me whenever I have to arch-chroot into my installation after doing something stupid to my system.

This is the consideration that I have for this matter.

The fun bit is that if the change stops the system booting I have to reach for the live ISO. Yay.

I want to utilize multiple kernels, in order to avoid to resort to a live ISO.

-thc

Member

Registered: 2017-03-15

Posts: 715

Re: A selection of kernels and configurations to boot with (GRUB)

In addition to the three "default" GRUB entries generated by grub-mkconfig and "/etc/grub.d/*" (Arch, Arch w/ options, UEFI firmware) I've created four more in "/etc/grub.d/40_custom":

- Loading the Windows boot manager (bootmgfw.efi)
- Arch w/o GUI (kernel option "systemd.unit=multi-user.target")
- Loading a compiled version of "ipxe.efi" that boots Arch from my server (replacing "disabling secure boot and booting from an ISO")
- Loading the EFI shell (edk2-shell) with a "startup.nsh" that boots a "last known good" UKI kernel

Last edited by -thc (Today 07:52:48)