On Sun, 1 Feb 2015 10:18:02 +0000
KatolaZ <katolaz@???> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 09:48:37PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>
> [cut]
>
> >
> > Perhaps detailed instructions for doing this should be in the
> > documentation for devuan -- somewhere where the home user is likely
> > to see it.
> >
>
> IMHO, a home user does not necessarily need to know how to rescue from
> a malfunctioning LILO conf, since he should not be able to stop LILO
> from working by installing and upgrading packages (which are the
> normal things a "home user" wpuld do). To be honest, a home user
> wouldn't usually bother at all about which boot loader is used.
>
> The best way of getting LILO stop working is by mangling kernel image
> names (i.e., due to compilation/manual upgrade to another version) and
> messing up disk partitions, that is something the "home user" does not
> usually need to do. And if it does, then he is no more a "home user"
> but a wannabe-experienced-user,

By all means then, a wannabe-experienced-user. Let's document busting
back into a borked LILO machine for the wannabe-experienced-user so he
can bust back into his machine if he borks it.

> and should learn the hard way how to
> fix troubles he has caused (and by "the hard way" I mean experience
> the pain of loosing data, trashing a working distribution, erasing by
> mistake an entire disk, and similar funny stuff that increase your
> awareness about the potential damage that ignorance can make...).

That's a little harsh and punitive, don't you think? I'd imagine just
having to bust back in and re-lilo would get his attention --- he
needn't lose those family pictures he took yesterday and hasn't backed
up yet.

> I believe that the way forward is simple: let's give standard,
> rock-solid working environments to "home users", as that provided so
> far by Debian & relatives, but leave the freedom to mess things up to
> the people that know how to do that (or would like to learn it...).

Abso-Lutely. As the OP, I never intended to suggest that Devuan should
necessarily switch *the default* away from Grub2. I merely voiced the
hope that LILO, ELILO, and the syslinux group would be available as
packages. And I wholeheartedly agree with Hendrick that the process of
busting back into a borked LILO machine, fixing lilo.conf, and
re-liloing, should be documented.

I wrote a rudimentary form of such a document, as applied to 1999
technology, here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/knoppix/knoppix_rescue.htm#_Busting_into_a_Locked_Up_Machine

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance