Bug#547714: Upgrade process from grub-legacy to grub-pc is unclear

[Matthijs Kooijman]

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.97~beta3-1
Severity: normal

Hi,

I've been upgrading from grub-legacy to grub-pc recently, and it's quite
unclear to me how this should work. I think it might be useful to have a
README.Debian (In grub-pc, I'd say) that explains how this process is
supposed to work. Some points of confusion:

	* aptitude tells me that grub-legacy will be replaced with grub-pc.
	  E.g, grub-legacy will be removed. Then, during configuration, I
	  get a prompt asking me to chainload grub-pc into grub-legacy,
	  since grub-pc doesn't always work. But... I just removed
	  grub-legacy? What if it doesn't work? How can I even chainload
	  grub-pc into grub-legacy when the latter was removed? Scary...
	* In hindsight, I suspect all this works because grub-legacy is
	  still installed into my mbr, and there is crap left behind in my
	  /boot/grub (stage1, stage2). Seems a bit brittle to keep relying
	  on a package that's only lingering around in the mbr, but this has
	  probably been discussed already.
	* Grub-pc ships all kinds of legacy stuff (in particular
	  update-grub) which do not seem to make sense there.
	* Grub-pc asks me if I want to chainload it, so I can test it
	  comfortably. However, I did not expect grub2 to become the
	  default. If I'm running on a server with limited physical access,
	  this might cause problems to an unaware administrator. Perhaps not
	  selecting grub-pc by default, or adding a note about this to the
	  chainloading prompt is in order?
	* Grub-pc replaces grub-legacy, meaning it will uninstall
	  grub-legacy and replace it with grub-pc when doing a full upgrade.
	  But, what if grub-pc doesn't work for me? Reinstalling grub-legacy
	  will probably not work, since that will be replaced by grub-pc
	  again on the next upgrade right? Should I put grub-legacy in the
	  hold state then? That will prevent upgrades. Should I hold
	  grub-pc?

I'm quite aware that this might appear as a nagging point, but I'm quite
convinced that there is a real problem here. I consider myself quite an
advanced user, and even I don't quite understand how it works.

Adding a README.Debian might not even be sufficient, perhaps some
debconf prompting with a pointer would be even better.

Gr.

Matthijs

(This was my last report, really! :-)