Bug#423217: grub-pc: Should not set itself up completely automatically on installation

[Robert Millan]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 05:58:15PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> 
> I also wonder how this works when the package is installed from 
> debian-installer which AFAIK takes care of setting up grub itself.

grub-installer runs "grub-install" and "update-grub" again, and basicaly
reinstalls grub one more time.

> I would strongly suggest to either not set up grub automatically or at 
> least ask a debconf question whether the user really wants to set up 
> grub.

The whole process is harmless, although maybe too verbose (and easy to
miss-interpret).  Perhaps we should replace all this output with something
like "echo Doing this" and "echo Doing that".

Disabling it or adding an option to disable it seems like a bad thing.  Mainly
because:
  - User can always just install "grub" again and restore the old menu.lst.
    That is equivalent to a "disable" option.  OTOH, installing grub2 and not
    using it is usualy pointless.
  - We need to provide a simple upgrade path for those users who don't even
    know what GRUB is.
  - When we add new features as default (e.g. gfxterm), it's not good if they're
    only default for new users and not existing ones.  This way we can't get
    proper QA for anything we add!

> However, this should be done in such a way that the question does 
> not get asked when grub-pc is installed by debian-installer.

What do you mean with this?

> Setting up grub-pc (1.95+20070507-1) ...
> Updating /boot/grub/grub.cfg ...
> grub-probe: error: Cannot open `/boot/grub/device.map'
> grub-probe: error: Cannot open `/boot/grub/device.map'
> grub-probe: error: Cannot open `/boot/grub/device.map'

This means we should run update-grub after grub-install, never before.  Fixed
in svn.

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Robert Millan

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