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Apparently, though unproven, at 19:48 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did |
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opine thusly: |
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|
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> It seems grub2 is a whopper. Check this out: |
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> |
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> root@fireball / # du -shc boot |
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> 13M boot |
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> 13M total |
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> root@fireball / # ls -al /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r* |
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> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4201472 Dec 15 00:16 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-1 |
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> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4204768 Dec 19 23:11 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r4-2 |
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> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4207168 Jan 4 23:38 /boot/bzImage-2.6.36-r6-1 |
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> root@fireball / # |
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> |
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> So, my /boot is 13Mbs and I have three kernels there plus copies of |
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> their config files as well. Those are full blown ones since I don't use |
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> modules. I guess grub2 may make some people have to grow their /boot |
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> partition a bit for all that. I'm not planning to try grub2 for a bit |
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> yet but from the looks of it, it's a good thing I made my /boot |
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> partition 200Mbs. o_O |
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> |
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> Why so much you reckon? I did a emerge -pv and it has to install three |
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> more packages, in addition to the ones grub-static pulled in already. |
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> Does grub2 wash dishes too? I need one of those if it does. lol |
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It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. |
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Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't |
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understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and only |
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then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand how to find a |
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file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run to tell the |
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bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into memory. |
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This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run lilo |
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before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum of OS-like |
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features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own syntax of defining |
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drive names, then would make it's way through the read-only fs it found there |
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to find the kernel. It supported a small number of file systems, just enough |
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so that a 50M partition would be usable on almost any platform. |
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grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, it's |
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a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! |
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It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild even has |
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a truetype USE flag. |
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Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a bootloader |
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that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 seconds it's on- |
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screen |
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|
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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