GRUB and GRUB2

Xi0N · 2011-08-28 09:09:30

According to Arch's Wiki, GRUB's article ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB ) "is expected to be superseded by GRUB2 in the near future"
Well, when is, more or less, that "near future" - the wiki has stated so since a really long time ago.... one year? one month? 5 years?
The intention of this post is not to rush anything, i just wanted to ask if it is right to start migrating to grub2, which is the status of grub2 (does it have any bug?) and if it is worth it to change to grub2 already... what thing would we win, which ones would we lose.....
So, I leave this question for the experts... thanks!!!

Last edited by Xi0N (2011-08-28 09:09:49)

graysky · 2011-08-28 09:17:55

Timelines? Dunno. Just use grub for now unless you can add the needed grub2 partition (1 MB) easily.

cbowman57 · 2011-08-28 10:28:02

I've grown accustomed to using grub2, so that's what I use with Arch & have never had any problems with it. With the addition of os-prober, which is available in AUR it automates & simplifies thing, especially for those of us that have multiple installations.

If you're just using Arch as your primary OS though, maybe with a Windows partition I really don't know that grub2 offers any real advantage.

Xi0N · 2011-08-31 11:26:59

And what about syslinux? Anyone using it? Pros? Cons?

Thanks!

ichase · 2011-08-31 11:32:21

cbowman57 wrote:

I've grown accustomed to using grub2, so that's what I use with Arch & have never had any problems with it. With the addition of os-prober, which is available in AUR it automates & simplifies thing, especially for those of us that have multiple installations.
If you're just using Arch as your primary OS though, maybe with a Windows partition I really don't know that grub2 offers any real advantage.

I could not have said it better myself. I started out in Linux almost a year ago and learned grub2 (which I currently use in Arch). But as cbowman57 stated, if you have only 2 OS's windows and Arch then it's just as simple to continue using legacy grub as the windows partition is normally set up in the menu.lst. All you have to do us uncomment it.

cbowman57 · 2011-08-31 11:39:17

Xi0N wrote:

And what about syslinux? Anyone using it? Pros? Cons?
Thanks!

Works great, but my experience with that was just trying to get a bulletproof way into Arch. I don't know how to use it with multiple installations.

If you do go with grub2 don't forget. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

My update-grub script (old habits die hard)

#!/bin/bash
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

exit 0

Last edited by cbowman57 (2011-10-18 14:21:30)

igndenok · 2011-08-31 12:35:31

Xi0N wrote:

And what about syslinux? Anyone using it? Pros? Cons?
Thanks!

Works well here
Dump GRUB (grub-gfx actually), not interested with GRUB2 so I tried Syslinux following ArchWiki, just a simple problem with boot order (sdb for Arch and sda for WinXP, where my boot order is sdb first then sda) at first.

ichase · 2011-08-31 13:00:56

cbowman57 wrote:

If you do go with grub2 don't forget. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Just to add to that. You need to have os-prober installed from the AUR for that to properly work. Learned that lesson a while back.

graysky · 2011-08-31 13:09:14

ichase wrote:

Just to add to that. You need to have os-prober installed from the AUR for that to properly work. Learned that lesson a while back.

Not entirely true... the standard works if your /boot is mounted. My understanding about os-prober is that it looks on other partitions. Am I wrong?

ichase · 2011-08-31 13:16:54

Not wrong at all. os-prober works great when you have multiple OS's installed on one machine. Actually it will also assist grub-mkconfig find multiple OS's installed on multiple drives to include external ones.
I also believe that grub-mkconfig will find OS's that have /boot mounted as you mentioned with out the use of os-prober but I have never tried it. I had multiple OS's installed on my desktop (8 to be exact) and when I ran grub-mkconfig it did not find them. (Arch hosts grub) that is when I learned about os-prober and that fixed my problem. Now another thing to note is, this is not fool proof as some OS's that were written to grub.cfg wound up in kernel panic when I attempted to select them from my grub menu. Had to do with the difference in how legacy grub and grub2 number the partitions.

dhave · 2011-08-31 13:40:02

Hardware is moving in the direction away from legacy grub, since unmodified legacy grub doesn't support gpt-formatted drives. Advantages of gpt are listed here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GU … tion_Table

It looks as if new systems will eventually boot via efi on gpt-formatted drives. A lot of new notebooks are already there.

Last edited by dhave (2011-08-31 13:43:55)

cbowman57 · 2011-08-31 13:54:37

After looking at upcoming changes it's no wonder MS is so particular about which partitions are used for Windows installations.

Linux leads the way!

gour · 2011-09-06 16:29:53

cbowman57 wrote:

Xi0N wrote:
And what about syslinux? Anyone using it? Pros? Cons?
Thanks!
Works great, but my experience with that was just trying to get a bulletproof way into Arch. I don't know how to use it with multiple installations.

Today I wanted to prepare my 2nd HD to be used in raid-1 array with ext4 fs, having /boot & swap in raid-1, but then I hit potential problem of booting such GPT disk using mdadm-1.2 metadata:

It looks syslinux can't do it, while, Grub2, apparently does it.

Anyone can confirm?

filam · 2011-09-07 16:52:38

gour wrote:

Today I wanted to prepare my 2nd HD to be used in raid-1 array with ext4 fs, having /boot & swap in raid-1, but then I hit potential problem of booting such GPT disk using mdadm-1.2 metadata:
It looks syslinux can't do it, while, Grub2, apparently does it.

That's the same impression that I got. I'm currently revising a Wiki article while I install a RAID5 array: User:Filam/RAID. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

gour · 2011-09-08 09:48:48

filam wrote:

That's the same impression that I got. I'm currently revising a Wiki article while I install a RAID5 array: User:Filam/RAID. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I got confirmation that syslinux can handle 1.0 metadata and that's what I did setup, iow. I created 3 md arrays, one for /boot, another for /swap (prefer stability over performance) and another for LVM2 volumes (/home & /). Now waiting for the syncing process to finish.

filam · 2011-09-08 13:27:45

gour wrote:

I got confirmation that syslinux can handle 1.0 metadata and that's what I did setup, iow.

That's great to hear! I might do the same now. So I assume you still had to create a separate 1MB partition before /boot for Syslinux? And then used the new installer to configure and install Syslinux? And where did you get that confirmation? IRC?

gour wrote:

I created 3 md arrays, one for /boot, another for /swap (prefer stability over performance) and another for LVM2 volumes (/home & /). Now waiting for the syncing process to finish.

I created a separate section for the Swap space. Does that explanation make sense to you? Why wouldn't you just create two arrays (i.e. /boot and LVM) and add the swap space as a logical volume to one large volume group? It seems like that would provide all the additional benefits of using LVM (e.g. easily resizing the swap partition) without any less stability, since it's still on a RAID1 array.

gour · 2011-09-08 14:05:07

filam wrote:

That's great to hear! I might do the same now. So I assume you still had to create a separate 1MB partition before /boot for Syslinux?

No, I just followed this after preparing hard disk for GPT.

Wiki says:

dd bs=440 conv=notrunc count=1 if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda

And then used the new installer to configure and install Syslinux?

No, I was going from single disk to raid-1 setup.

And where did you get that confirmation? IRC?

Sylinux's mailing list.

Does that explanation make sense to you?

Well, I was told and believe it's safer to have swap in raid-1.

Why wouldn't you just create two arrays (i.e. /boot and LVM) and add the swap space as a logical volume to one large volume group? It seems like that would provide all the additional benefits of using LVM (e.g. easily resizing the swap partition) without any less stability, since it's still on a RAID1 array.

People in #lvm told me:

...swap is even *worse* than boot -- if one drive gets corrupted, it might take down the whole system.

Otoh, size of my swap is pretty stable.

filam · 2011-09-08 15:28:08

gour wrote:

filam wrote:
And where did you get that confirmation? IRC?
Sylinux's mailing list.

Unfortunately, it looks like www.syslinux.org is currently down.

gour wrote:

People in #lvm told me:
...swap is even *worse* than boot -- if one drive gets corrupted, it might take down the whole system.

Ah, I never considered the implications of placing a swap space on the same partition as the root directory. I guess placing them in separate logical volumes isn't going to isolate the them from corrupting each other.

Thanks for the explanation, gour!

Xi0N · 2012-01-29 03:31:51

I finally went with syslinux..... it seems to be the most generic, compatible and tested one.....
Installed in one laptop still
I found one issue, though in the install process.
The hdd's partition structure is GPT.... so, when you install arch, in the step when you actually install the bootloader, you are asked if you want to install the bootloader in the MBR.... as GPT does not have MBR, you get an error message.... so, i finally had to boot a live usb and run this commands: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … le_aka_GPT
Is this normal? How can i do this from the installation media?

Arch Linux

#1 2011-08-28 09:09:30

GRUB and GRUB2

#2 2011-08-28 09:17:55

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#3 2011-08-28 10:28:02

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#4 2011-08-31 11:26:59

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#5 2011-08-31 11:32:21

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#6 2011-08-31 11:39:17

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#7 2011-08-31 12:35:31

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#8 2011-08-31 13:00:56

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#9 2011-08-31 13:09:14

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#10 2011-08-31 13:16:54

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#11 2011-08-31 13:40:02

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#12 2011-08-31 13:54:37

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#13 2011-09-06 16:29:53

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#14 2011-09-07 16:52:38

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#15 2011-09-08 09:48:48

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#16 2011-09-08 13:27:45

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#17 2011-09-08 14:05:07

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#18 2011-09-08 15:28:08

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

#19 2012-01-29 03:31:51

Re: GRUB and GRUB2

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