GRUB 2.0 Moves Closer With GRUB 1.97 Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GRUB 2.0 Moves Closer With GRUB 1.97 Release

While Ubuntu 9.10 is using GRUB2 by default for its boot-loader on new installations, GRUB 2.0 has actually yet to be released even after many years in development. However, on this Sunday afternoon version 2 of GNU GRUB is closer to seeing the light of day...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzYzOQ

[Kano]

Good timing, today i updated the 1.97 beta 4 Debian package for Kanotix Btw. I still miss the override for the video mode in the way grub 2 would like it in /etc/default/grub.

[kernelOfTruth]

indeed !

very good timing

now I finally can install ubuntu besides gentoo and multiboot between several windows versions and linux-distributions

the last missing bit was password and ext4-support

great work devs !

[Kano]

Ext4 support works since ages, i had Kanotix test images in march with grub2 already. Long before U did

[xeros]

I see more nice improvements in changelog than mentioned in this news, like loading Mac OS X kernel, partition manipulation, hdparm, LZMA compression, and UUIDs support.

[val-gaav]

and ubuntu had ext4 support in grub1 (now legacy) since jaunty via extra patch

I don't really get though the grub2 way ... For me it was easier to edit one config file instead of having several scripts, config files, and one main config file that is written and (over written ) by those scripts...

Seriously the old way was simple, the new one seems complicated with no good reason for it ... Unless I do not know something ?

[Zapp!]

just edit /etc/default/grub according to your needs. This is the place where all the standart options go (on Debian at least).

[Kano]

@val-gaav

I use GRUB2 since July 2008, because it was possible to embed it inside the Win bootloader and i had one board that did not work with GRUB4DOS.

Since then the syntax of some commands like search changed, new command were added like drivemap (which i added 1 month before using a patch).

If you use it with Linux and you are familiar with bash scripting the new way is really what you like. Also partition counting is now the Linux way. The menu.lst was more statically, now you can write scripts that check all conditions you need to write the optimal settings as config - of course you don't need to complicate things as there is an example in there too:

/etc/grub.d/40_custom

I would not use that file - but a similar named one, like 50_whatever or 09_something. 09 is before Linux entries, that means if you like to boot Win first you could do:

mv /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober /etc/grub.d/09_os-prober

all changes are applied when you do

update-grub

All that is not really complicated, you just need a bit time. Really cool is also the loopback mode, example for U - save for example as /etc/grub.d/50_ubuntu_iso

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# Copy into /etc/grub2.d and set chmod +x
# Change isoname var correctly - relative to a partition.
# Remove language override options if you don't like german ;)
menuentry "Ubuntu Live" {
	set isoname=/ISO/karmic-desktop-i386.iso
	search -sf $isoname
	loopback iso $isoname
	linux (iso)/casper/vmlinuz iso-scan/filename=$isoname boot=casper quiet splash console-setup/layoutcode=de debian-installer/language=de
	initrd (iso)/casper/initrd.lz
}