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

[Matthijs Kooijman]

Hi Felix,

> What all kind of legacy stuff?
> It's actually only legacy/update-grub and legacy/grub-set-default for
> the chainload to GRUB 2 option.
Yeah, that's what I've seen. Also, the stuff lying around in /boot, but
I've learned now that that's stuff from grub-installing.

> So if we would drop the stub then every Debian user + grub-installer
> need to be changed to use /etc/kernel/{postinst,postrm}.d
> And we got a bug report against grub2 from someone who still
> had /sbin/update-grub in his kernel-img.conf even though grub-legacy
> warns still the etch release that this has been deprecated.
> And Debian/Ubuntu users are just used to `update-grub' instead of
> `grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg'
Having update-grub around is probably fine, it's not really any legacy instead
of the name.

OTOH, chaning things to use /etc/kernel/ hooks might not be bad. I think that
at least initramfs is using this over custom hooks in kerel-img.conf (but this
is probably another issue, so don't bother to respond :-p).

> > 	* 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?
> 
> No, It's just the `grub' package which was first a dummy one depending
> on `grub-legacy' with the debconf note that warned about that and then
> it changed to depend on `grub-pc'.
Ah, just a Replaces: dependency is not enough for apt to replace grub-legacy
with grub-pc on its own, but it only allows it to know to remove grub-legacy
when installing grub-pc for another reason (e.g., the dependency of the grub
package). So, removing grub and grub-pc and reinstalling grub-legacy should
get grub-legacy back. Probably also something to note in README.Debian.


> > (This was my last report, really! :-)
> I assume at least for grub2 and today. But if you find other bugs
> especially important ones then I hope you still tell us :)
I mostly meant, the last report on the upgrade process, since I don't intend
to do that again :-)

Gr.

Matthijs
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