Lilo removal in Squeeze

[thewanderer]

How am I supposed to boot my EFI machine now? GRUB doesn't support EFI. If it did, Debian installer would have offered that to me...

[pcalvert]

How am I supposed to boot my EFI machine now? GRUB doesn't support EFI.

Try the LILO deb from Lenny, perhaps? If that doesn't work, you could grab the LILO source code from Lenny and compile it on a Squeeze system. However, I suspect the deb from Lenny will work as is.

I just checked, and there are packages for LILO in Squeeze and Sid:
http://packages.debian.org/search?keywo ... ection=all

You might want to grab what you need while it's still available. In your case, it looks like you need elilo and elilo-installer.

Phil

[thewanderer]

Yeah, I have elilo installed on my production machine thanks to debian-installer. Got to archive it somewhere, along with the sources for backporting... I'm actually feeling like a refugee at a nuclear war, waiting in a shelter for the first blast...

[bugsbunny]

How am I supposed to boot my EFI machine now? GRUB doesn't support EFI. If it did, Debian installer would have offered that to me...

grub2 does support efi (at least supposedly, how well it actually works I don't know). Debian -- Package Search Results -- grub-efi

The installer may not (yet?) support it though. File a bug against the installer. Remember that the testing installer is exactly that - testing, and as such incomplete.

lilo is still available in both squeeze and sid. It may not be going away yet after all, I think the final resolution is undetermined at this time.

[thewanderer]

Okay, thanks. I'm not going to test that, though, because my production system cries when it's unable to boot, and so do the users. None of my other computers have EFI. I could run VirtualBox with EFI, but that has been tested thousands times, I guess.

[mojoman]

I use a separate boot partition with grub-legacy as the boot loader. I just had to upgrade grub-legacy to 0.98, but it still chainloads into Grub2 and/or boots with the correct kernel/initrd stuff added. Just a suggestion.

Cheers

I do that too. I've had it installed for years and I've forgotten how I did it. Now I never dare to venture into that dark partition except to edit menu.lst and have resigned. I just let it be, content with the fact that, well, it just seem to get the job done. On my Squeeze installation (which I use 99% of the time) I do have Grub2 but my boot partition with Grub-legacy points to my recent kernel on the Squeeze system (among other things) so Grub2 has never been used.

The thought of installing Grub2 on my boot partition did cross my mind briefly but I perished the hideous thought with a good dose of Spanish brandy (which, by the way, is a male word).

[plugwash]

Yeah, I have elilo installed on my production machine thanks to debian-installer.

Afaict the threat to lilo's inclusion relates to the original lilo not to the other bootloaders that have lilo in thier name.

[jjmac]

thewanderer wrote:

>>
Okay, thanks. I'm not going to test that, though, because my production system cries when it's unable to boot, and so do the users.
>>

It sounds like your running squeeze, if i'm reading it correctly. If so ... why are you risking that on a 'production' box. If it's just to have one or two particular packages installed, you could have done that with a back-port from recent source.


jm

[thewanderer]

No, not at all. I'm running Lenny but at some point in time the migration to Squeeze (when it's released) will be inevitable, so if elilo gets removed, I'll have to be prepared with another bootloader.
I had a funny chat with someone running Debian Sid on their production servers recently on IRC, though :P

[Lou]

English lacks gender. The use of the pronouns he, she corresponds to biological characteristics of the subject, and the use of it denotes sex irrelevance or inanimateness. It's the subject (or our perception of its concept) who possesses these characteristics, not the word.
I don't know how to explain this without examples from other languages, because English also lacks article and adjective agreements

"eagle" is masculine in German (der Adler) but feminine in Spanish (el ágila). Notice that it's the word, and not the subject, which possesses gender: "eagle" will always be feminine in Spanish, whether it refers to a male or a female animal;

Hehehe! You guys are funny! LILO, huh?

Growing up in New Jersey, i spoke spanish at home (my parents were from P.R. and spoke english and spanish; my grandparents only spanish), after 30 yrs in Panama and reading newspapers and watching tv in spanish it really honed my language skills. So here are my 2 cents:

"El águila" is ALWAYS male, regardless if the bird is female, the article 'el' (masculine) is the only one aplicable, you can specify the bird is female by indirectly pointing it out, as in: 'the female mate/mother/etc.

In Spanish, that would be:
El/Un (masculine noun) nuevo, or
La/Una (feminine noun) nueva.

Usually, but not necesarily

El mar estaba sereno...(in latin-america) (The sea was calm)
La mar estaba serena (in Spain)

El calor está insoportable (The heat is unbearable)
La calor está insoportable
it all depends where you live)

Ok, pop quiz tomorrow!
PD: english is a piece of cake, but the pronounciation is another story.

[jjmac]

Howdy All,


thewanderer wrote:

>>
No, not at all. I'm running Lenny but at some point in time the migration to Squeeze (when it's released) will be inevitable, so if elilo gets removed, I'll have to be prepared with another bootloader.
I had a funny chat with someone running Debian Sid on their production servers recently on IRC, though
>>

Ok, Not really a problem, just fetch the '.orig.gz, .diff.gz and .dsc' files from debs repository and back-port to your own set up. Or any source --- the latest upstream ...

Do a test config/compile on your box, even doing a test install with the 'DESTDIR' env variable appropriately set in your env to look at the upstreams idea of where everything goes compared to deb.

If that all works ok, then try the package build -=- Some working of the .dsc and debian/control and debian/rules files maybe needed to get ride of any depends that get in the way ... but that's all trivial stuff really.

Just back all those files up so you have the original set always handy. It's a piece of cake really and a good way of familiarising a person with the package build system as well. Or a person could always use dh-make if they want, but that's a bit of a cope out imo (grin). But it can be helpful if someone isn't familiar with back-porting.

Back-porting is a breeze depending on the package complexity and lilo/elilo/grub packages aren't complexed, unlike libc6 or xwindows which are.

Hope that wasn't me being perceived as a bit patronising if your already versed. But i do get surprised at times on how many people don't consider the option. Thinking it might be a mine field or something like that.

Good Luck

jm

[dotlj]

@Ed - ext4 - wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4

When using Lenny with GRUB and trying out Squeeze with GRUB2, I initially couldn't get GRUB2 to work, so bypassed it and manually added the lines to GRUB. This isn't too difficult but changing anything needed manual reconfiguring.
After many months, I finally got GRUB2 to install to MBR, it correctly found Squeeze and Lenny and everything has worked correctly since then. For nearly one year now, no problems. I'm happy with GRUB2, Squeeze.

Next, to replace Lenny with whatever comes after Squeeze, however I want to do a fresh install and use ext4 to compare with ext3. That is, I will have testing and squeeze. Squeeze, once stable will get security updates, but testing will later on get lots of updates.

[jjmac]

Howdy All,


I myself --- might install it to a usb stick as the developers have it flagged as being in 'beta'. Which means of course, it could be subject to change.

And, the only difference to Grub would appear to be in the expansion/enhancement of the command set and the graphic inclusions. Which is about time too. Other things like the config file are really just to prevent collisions (confusions) between the two set ups.

I also tend to see mbr installs of stage1 loaders as missing the point to the mbr, ie; in that it should really be kept as simple as possible. stage1 loaders installed there make the startup dependant on the integrity of its' support files. Where as, a simple boot-strapper keeps the mbr totally non-dependant. It was necessary a number of years back when bioses were limited in how far into a drive they could see but that isn't the case anymore. The man pages/docs are a bit slack in not elaborating on that point too, imo.


jm

[debil]

Seems alive and well so far.