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

[qOtavio Salvador]

Frans Pop <elendil at planet.nl> writes:

> On Thursday 10 May 2007 18:21, Robert Millan wrote:
>> 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.
>
> But also causes a delay in the installation. Doing things twice should in 
> general be avoided if possible.

Well, we can try to avoid doing it while running inside of installer
but it would be more easy to address using the dpkg-trigger support
that's planned.

>> > 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".
>
> OTOH a lot of the output _is_ normally needed to check that there were no 
> problems.

IIRC the errors are being send to stderr properly and then we could
make stdout quiet and receive the errors normally.

>> 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.
>
> These are only valid when current grub is already installed.

Yes but the need of "enabling new features" isn't.

>>   - 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!
>
> This is only valid for updates, not for new installs.
>
> Note that in my chroot I did _not_ have grub installed, specifically 
> because it is a chroot. I see no reason why grub needs to set itself up 
> in that case and I think that there is a lot to say for preserving the 
> behavior of the current grub in that case.
> After all, for new users the installation system will take care of 
> properly setting up grub on installation.
>
> So:
> - if current grub is installed, sure: make sure that it upgrades nicely,
>   probably using debconf questions to inform users about what is happening
>   and ask them if they maybe _do_ want to install grub-pc in their MBR or
>   wherever grub is currently installed
>   (but make sure you also cover the case where both grub and lilo are
>   installed and lilo is active)

We, at least for now, won't install grub2 but make it chainloadable
using grub and then user can test it and see if he can upgrade or not.

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