Boot Manager- Was: Linux not reporting

green_man green_man at bluefrog.biz
Sat Aug 21 11:41:25 EDT 2004


Cyber Source wrote, On 08/20/04 7:46 PM:

> You can install either. I believe Mandrake installs Lilo by default 
> and RedHat/Fedora install GRUB by default. GRUB has more flexibility 
> and options than Lilo, you can do simple things like put spaces in the 
> names, change without reinstalling, etc. I have come to prefer GRUB 
> but there are others that gotta have there Lilo (don't want any 
> flames). Both can be installed to the MBR.
>
> green_man wrote:
>
>> Cyber Source wrote, On 08/15/04 1:37 PM:
>>
>> ... I seem to remember that Lilo has a problem with large memory. Try 
>> using grub, you can easily switch back if it doesnt do the trick for 
>> you (although I don't know why you would). ...
>>
>> I always thought that the Boot Manager was sort of "integral" to the 
>> operating system.
>> How do you change from one to another ?
>> Is there a HOWTO somewhere for it ?
>>
>> What are the advantages of grub over LiLo, or is it more of a 
>> preference thing like Gnome vs KDE ?
>

A quick search found these advantages from many sources -

[quotes]
The problem with Microsoft operating system is that they all want to 
boot from the primary partition. This is where GRUB comes in. It can 
hide primary partitions. You can use up to 3 partitions to install 
Microsoft operating systems. GRUB will hide the other 2 partitions so 
that the operating systems will not see it. This means you will need 
another partition to share data between DOS, Win9x and Windows 2000. The 
4th partition is used for the extended partition.

This is where GNU GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader comes in. It 
differs from bootloaders such as LILO in that it can lie to Windows and 
make Windows believe that it's installed on the first partition even if 
it's not. So you can keep your current Linux system where it is and 
install Windows on the side.

I also wanted a menu system and GRUB provides a nice one.

Another nice feature of GRUB is that it supports reiserfs so I don't 
need to keep my /boot file in a separate ext2 partition.

GRUB's configuration file is read from the disk every time the system 
boots, preventing you from having to write over the MBR every time you 
change the boot options.

Most boot loaders are not sophisticated enough to read configuration 
files and use them to set up boot options. For example, to change a LILO 
boot configuration, such as changing the default operating system to 
boot, you must change a LILO configuration file and run a command that 
overwrites the system's MBR with the new configuration data. This is 
more risky than GRUB's method, because a misconfigured MBR would leave 
you with an unbootable system. With GRUB, if you misconfigure the 
configuration file and reboot, it will simply drop you to a command line 
and allow you to manually type commands that will launch the operating 
system. The MBR is not touched except to update the Stage 1, Stage 2, or 
menu configuration file locations, and this is rarely necessary.

When changes are made to the GRUB configuration file, it is not 
necessary to restart GRUB. Any changes made are automatically detected. 
If you do restart GRUB, you will be dropped to the command line GRUB shell.
[end quotes]

It sounds like a winner to me !!
What is the current version, and what else will it need so I don't wind 
up in rpm hell ?

-- 

* green_man
** on **Thunderbird 0.4*



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