Bug#470894: grub-installer: user parameters are not added to grub.cfg for grub2

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Mittwoch, den 10.06.2009, 15:39 +0100 schrieb Colin Watson:
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 12:24:19PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> > Package: grub-installer
> > Version: 1.55
> > Severity: important
> > 
> > Currently no user parameters (such as kernel parameters, vga=, quiet) are 
> > included in the generated configuration file for grub2.
> > 
> > This is a blocker for making grub2 default.
> 
> The obvious way to do this seems to be to have grub-installer put the
> output of user-params in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX or
> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT (as appropriate) in /etc/default/grub.
> 
> That file is currently a dpkg-managed conffile, though. Do people feel
> that this constitutes an intentional sysadmin change to the point where
> having the installer automatically modify a conffile is acceptable? (I
> think it's borderline; if it would be very inconvenient to make it not
> be a dpkg-managed conffile I think it would be acceptable.)

Well policy says that conffiles and maintaing the config scripts via the
maintainer scripts must not be mixed.
Though it says also `dpkg will ask about overwriting the file every time
the package is upgraded.', which maybe just means it must not be used on
the same file. That should be made more clear in policy.

I already asked once #debian-devel if policy forbids editing of
configuration files in maintainer scripts and they said it does.
But even now I fail to find where it says that.
10.7.3 only says that on package upgrades local changes must be
preserved.

If it gets edited during grub-install by a debconf prompt then this is
a) no package upgrade and b) a local change by the sysadmin

/etc/default/grub isn't that important to update on upgrades.
Then users would just not easily see if we introduce new variables
there.
But the files in /etc/grub.d really should be upgraded.
Would it maybe help if we'd switch to use ucf for them?
-- 
Felix Zielcke