Bug#546351: grub-efi: Grub-efi lacks any documentation

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Samstag, den 12.09.2009, 19:16 +0100 schrieb John Winters:
> Felix Zielcke wrote:
> [snip]
> > With `general page' above you mean these 2 Wiki sites?
> > http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnEFI
> > http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > 
> > The problem is, that neither Robert nor me has any EFI system so we have
> > to rely on upstream (or other people) for the documentation about that.
> > 
> > You can just install the sid version under lenny. There's no need for a
> > backport.
> > I'd recommend it anyway, we fixed many many things since the lenny
> > version.
> 
> It's not the installing that's a problem.  The thing is, just installing
> it doesn't really do anything.  It certainly doesn't render the system
> efi-bootable.
> 
> Once you have installed the grub-efi package you have to do something to
> make it actually work.  The package includes no clue as to what this
> something is.
> 
> Compare with the traditional grub and lilo packages, which once you've
> installed them will boot the system.

Note that we have #427492 open.
If somebody tells us how to properly use efibootmgr we could make the
efi grub-install more useful.

> I'd also query why installing grub-efi causes grub-pc to be uninstalled.
>  There is a danger here of rendering a system un-bootable.  Since just
> installing grub-efi doesn't give you a working boot mechanism, removing
> the alternative would seem to be both unnecessary and dangerous.
> 

See #543376
You can see from the filelist that grub-efi-{ia32,amd64} and grub-pc all
have files included which the other ones have too.
So it isn't that easy to just remove the Conflicts in debian/control for
them.
Just uninstalling grub-pc doestn't make your system unbootable. It
doestn't touch /boot/grub
Though we added now recently a debconf prompt to remove the grub2 files
from /boot/grub but that defaults to no.

-- 
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer