Bug#383282: update-grub and current menu.lst are not user-friendly

[Maximiliano Curia]

severity 383282 important
retitle 383282 update-grub and current menu.lst file are not user-friendly
thanks,

Hello,

I believe the problem you are dealing with is due to a not very clear usage of
menu.lst as a configuration file for update-grub.

Please look in you menu.lst, you'll find a line with:

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

followed by some documentation on how to modify the parameters update-grub
uses. After that lines like:

# groot=(hd0,0)

Which look like comments but aren't really comments, those are the settings
that update-grub will use to regenerate the automatic grub entries.

By the look of the changes in the menu.lst you submitted you'll probably have
those set as:

# groot=(hd0,6)
# kopt=root=/dev/hda7 ro

Now, if you change those and then run "update-grub" as root, you'll probably
fix your particular problem, but I believe this is still a bug in grub.

update-grub should have a configuration file on its own (/etc/grub/grub.conf,
for example), where the configuration is not done in comments.

update-grub should also check if the user has modified the text inside the
AUTOMATIC statements, a simple md5 check would be enough for that. If it has
changed, a sane procedure could be to append the user modified configurations
under a title !! Manually modified automatic grub entries, please check your
/etc/grub/grub.conf !!

I don't think this is such a difficult thing to do.  If the maintainers think
it's worth it, I could try to come up with a patch that makes update grub
behave as described, together with a transitional script for updating all the
current installed instances.

-- 
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
		-- (Rich Cook)
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