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

[Jason Thomas]

Yay, someone else can see the problem.  I wrote a replacement for
update-grub and nobody wanted to test it.

Good Luck!

On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 04:33:34PM -0300, Maximiliano Curia wrote:
> 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)
> Saludos /\/\ /\ >< `/
> 
> 
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