On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 12:59:51PM -0500, Neo Futur wrote:
> I completely agree with most of the comments above about grub2.
> I manage dedicated server and build my own grsec kernel, so I often
> have to use the bootloader, so many times I couldnt get it to boot
> with grub2 after hours trying and as soon as I tried with lilo or
> grub-legacy it worked immediately my kernel was not at fault but some
> obscure grub2 problem.
>
> So I upvote this idea of having devuan coming with a different default
> bootloader, wether it is grub1 or lilo ( or whatever is simple enough
> to be used by an average human, meaning not grub2 )

Lilo is easy to use, its configuration files are somewhat
comprehensible, but it dooes take a while befre you understand what's
what, because the interaction between syntax and semantics isn't that
well documented (at least, it wsan't long ago when I still needed to
read it).

THe big problem with lilo is that at the time of running the lilo
command, it figures out exactly where the boot-time files are and sets
up a table to be used at boot time. If those files are moved on
disk for any reason, even if they're in the same logical location i
the file system, it won't boot.

Such file movement cab happen when one upgrades the kernel to a new
version that still has the same file name. Of course, when you upgrade
the kernel, dpkg will cause lilo to be rerun.. But if something goe
wrong with that, you could be doomed.

grub, on the other hand, can read the file system at boot time (for
some file systems), and it can still find them. The more complicated
the file system supported, the more complicated the code that has to be
available at boot time.

I try to have multiple ways of booting my system, just in case. grub
can boot it directly from a hard disk's boot record; lilo is set up to
boot from a floppy.

-- hendrik