[gentoo-amd64] Re: About to install on a 64 bit system. Advice wanted.

[Duncan]

Dale posted on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:13:21 -0600 as excerpted:

> Stan Sander wrote:

>> In addition to using grub-static, you will need to have the IA32
>> Emulation enabled in your kernel, else you won't be able to execute
>> grub at all.  It's under file formats / Emulations in the menu.

I think that's covered in the handbook, now, but posting's still good, 
just in case it would have been overlooked.  FWIW when I first switched to 
no-multilib, before I did the 32-bit chroot thing, I tried turning off 
that option in the kernel... and found I couldn't run... I think it was 
lilo I was running at the time, properly, so it's definitely worth 
remembering.

> Glad you posted this.  I looked at the USE flags for grub not a package
> called grub-static.  That seems to be two different beasts.  I never
> knew that package existed.  Would emerging the plain grub with the
> static USE flag give the same results?  I would think not else they
> would just have one package but am curious just the same.

The grub-static package is actually a pre-built grub (obviously built with 
the static USE flag), binpkged by gentoo/amd64, with an ebuild to unpack 
and install it, for those that want/need it.  With both lilo and grub, 
parts are 32-bit (or actually, 16-bit) only, as that's the mode all x86 
computers even x86_64/amd64 computers start their boot in, so that's what 
at least part of an x86 bootloader must be built in.  As such, the grub 
package remains hard-masked in the no-multilib profiles (someone at one 
point claimed it should build, but I haven't tried and am skeptical, 
especially when it's still hard-masked for no-multilib), where grub-static 
is the recommended bootloader.

But grub-static actually /is/ a binpkged grub, built on either a 32-bit 
only machine or a 64-bit machine with multilib (I'm not sure which), with 
an ebuild that simply unpacks the binpkg, and puts the files where they 
need to go when it's installed.  As such, emerging grub with the static 
and other USE flags set as in the binpkg, should get something quite 
similar, yes.  But there's some particulars there I'm not sure of (the 
boot part should be identical, but I'm not sure if the part run on a 
normally running machine gets compiled in 32-bit mode or in 64-bit mode on 
a 64-bit machine, and that could be critical), so I'm not sure whether 
it'd be an exact replacement or not.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman