Scheduled Maintenance: We are aware of an issue with Google, AOL, and Yahoo services as email providers which are blocking new registrations. We are trying to fix the issue and we have several internal and external support tickets in process to resolve the issue. Please see: viewtopic.php?t=158230

 

 

 

LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

Ask for help with issues regarding the Installations of the Debian O/S.
Post Reply
Message
Author
rayandrews
Posts: 112
Joined: 2014-01-31 21:32
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 1 time

LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#1 Post by rayandrews »

So, to make a long story short, I was running Debian 9, decided to upgrade to '11'. Left 9 installed on sdc, used the installer to sdb which I had already partitioned as I prefer. But the installer refused to use my existing partitions so I just defaulted back to an install on the drive as one big partition (if that's what you call it when the drive is not partitioned).

Got it all running fine. Using GRUB naturally. Then I partitioned sda as I prefer and manually copied all data from sdb to where it would now belong. Ah! but how to boot directly to sda from BIOS? GRUB was installed on sdb. So, since, sadly, LILO seems to no longer be installable, I stole it from sdc (Debian 9) -- just copied it to /sbin on sda -- ran this: "lilo -C rescue" with 'rescue' being:

large-memory
lba32
compact
prompt
verbose = 1
install = menu
timeout = 40
vga = 0x305
boot = /dev/sda

menu-title="RESCUE:sda"

image = /boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-18-amd64
initrd = /boot/initrd.img-5.10.0-18-amd64
root = "LABEL=d5-12-Deb11"
label = sda:d5-D11
----------------------------------------------

(How I love LILO, it just works! You Know and you See what it's doing!)

... and it boots sda with no trouble (here I am!). Now ... it all works, I understand it and want to keep it. But LILO is now history, so it seems, and I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a doc that will give me the best info on how to install GRUB on sda entirely manually if that's possible. Research to this point seems to say that you hafta use the install media. There's a thousand hits, Googling for answers, but I want to make sure I have the recommended doc. Or perhaps I just just leave my faithful LILO in charge? I know! -- folks can't stand things that Just Work, life is not meant to be simple. Like the government, GRUB and SystemD know what we need better than we do.

Aki
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 2823
Joined: 2014-07-20 18:12
Location: Europe
Has thanked: 69 times
Been thanked: 385 times

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#2 Post by Aki »

Hello,
rayandrews wrote: 2022-10-02 16:40 I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a doc that will give me the best info on how to install GRUB on sda entirely manually if that's possible.
You can see the "GNU GRUB Manual 2.06": Installing GRUB using grub-install
rayandrews wrote: 2022-10-02 16:40 Or perhaps I just just leave my faithful LILO in charge?
LiLO in not developed anymore (see [0]). The latest version is available in Debian Unstable [1], but it will not land in Debian Testing or in Debian Stable. You can use the version in Debian Unstable or manually backport [2] it to Debian Stable.

[0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=973850
[1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/lilo
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/SimpleBackportCreation
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀

rayandrews
Posts: 112
Joined: 2014-01-31 21:32
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#3 Post by rayandrews »

Why abandoned? It is so sweetly simple, so reliable, so linuxy. As the sages used to say: "Do one thing and do it well". lilo does one thing and does it well. I know it won't boot Windows. I don't have Windows. I know it won't boot over a network. I don't boot over networks. I know it doesn't have documentation in Coptic. I don't speak Coptic. lilo should live. Anyway thanks for the links, one should learn to live with grub even if one can mostly avoid it.

Hafta say, on first scan, that looks like a most excellently written manual. If grub can explain itself to me in readable English I might come to accept it.

jmgibson1981
Posts: 296
Joined: 2015-06-07 14:38
Has thanked: 11 times
Been thanked: 32 times

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#4 Post by jmgibson1981 »

You can only ask the developer why it's abandoned. If you can fork it and keep it going then go nuts. But if you can't you are at the mercy of the dev. I'd guess it simply isn't used by enough people and no one will bend over backwards to keep a small handful of people happy when the majority won't bother or benefit. I think Slackware still uses it by default but I'm not sure if they are going to take over dev of it. I know when I tried it I couldn't get it to work. Ended up with grub anyway.

Code: Select all

grub-install /dev/sdX && update-grub
Easy as it gets.

It's kind of funny. Open source is no different than closed in this regard. If the company / dev ends it then that's it. With open it can at least be forked of course but there is zero guarantee of that. Likewise if no other company buys the project and keeps it going it's dead in the water. I think sometimes we tend to forget that the differences between closed and open aren't really that big in many ways.

p.H
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 3049
Joined: 2017-09-17 07:12
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 132 times

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#5 Post by p.H »

rayandrews wrote: 2022-10-10 12:49 lilo does one thing and does it well.
Not so well nor reliably. If I remember correctly, LILO does not understand filesystems so it relies on hard-coded block lists to load kernel files and will fail if such file was moved to different blocks by the filesystem unless you reinstall it. A long time ago I used to use it and some day after an update it refused to install itself as usual pretending that there was a NTFS signature in the boot sector although this drive never had NTFS...
rayandrews wrote: 2022-10-10 12:49 I know it won't boot Windows.
Neither does GRUB. Both can only chainload Windows boot loader.

LILO does not boot in EFI mode, which has become widespread these days. There was once eLILO, but it was abandoned even before LILO was.

Did you consider syslinux/extlinux as an alternative ?

rayandrews
Posts: 112
Joined: 2014-01-31 21:32
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#6 Post by rayandrews »

"LILO does not understand filesystems so it relies on hard-coded block lists"

True, but it's so easy to rerun it to remap everything if the map file or the init or the kernel has been moved. I'm aware of it's simplicity but that's why I like it.

"Did you consider syslinux/extlinux as an alternative ?"

I think I looked at one of those years ago. Not sure why I returned to lilo, maybe because I am completely happy with it, I can't think of an improvement. Mind this EFI thing -- I don't know anything about it, and so far I can't see any reason to worry about it either ... but the day may come. Right now I'm absolutely happy in my ignorance ;-) Mind, I will probably give grub another look one of these days, I'm not a ludite.

p.H
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 3049
Joined: 2017-09-17 07:12
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 132 times

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#7 Post by p.H »

rayandrews wrote: 2022-10-10 20:39 it's so easy to rerun it to remap everything if the map file or the init or the kernel has been moved
It is also so easy to forget to rerun lilo, or to be unaware that a file has been moved.

rayandrews
Posts: 112
Joined: 2014-01-31 21:32
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: LILO to GRUB ... dare I?

#8 Post by rayandrews »

Sure, but I tend to always remember. No doubt grub has it's advantages, otoh it also tries to take over the computer.

Post Reply