Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
On Fri, 2011-07-01 at 15:36 -0700, Linda Walsh wrote:
Felix Miata wrote:
On 2011/06/30 15:54 (GMT-0700) Greg KH composed:
So what have we done that break things that were not fixed? Daily/constantly I'm reminded of https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=584493 on boxes running openSUSE kernels but not on openSUSE running vanilla kernels or in other distros.
Moving to grub, before it was ready...
I've had SuSE then openSUSE on my desktop(s) / laptop since 9.4. I've never once experience boot issue regarding grub. And I typically use fairly 'advanced' configurations.
and thus dropping support for XFS for a while (not sure if it is officially supported again, yet, or not, but still seem to remember getting a message about boot problems with root on XFS in last install).
XFS works well, I've never noticed it not supported.
SIMPLE RULE: Create a 256MB ext3 /boot partition. I do this on every box running any distro - and as I said - I've never had a boot issue. Then put everything else in LVM on whatever filesystem you like.
Um... your idea of 'advanced' and mine aren't the same. My advanced includes specifying the mount params on my xfs partitions -- INCLUDING the root partition. If I used your setup, I'm pretty sure my system would not boot, since I'm pretty sure, IF I built in ext3 support in my kernel, at best, it would be a module, located on the XFS boot partition. (FWIW, I've been using Suse since ~ 6.8...)
and dropping support for booting from YOUR HARD DISK (instead of a RAM DISK); As a result of this, and not using the SUSE boot-ram-disk, with all it's hidden operations, I wasn't able to get output turned on the console until AFTER full boot (login prompt). With suse kernel -- got full kernel output during bootup, with a vanilla kernel booting with no-ram disk, was not able to get it to give any output -- same kernel with lilo loads fine (this was earlier in the 11.x series, don't know about now, dropped grub and haven't looked back!).
I don't think people who play with kernels count as 'typical users'. If you play with kernels you know (a) to keep backups (b) have a fail-over strategy and (c) read release notes. Someone who plays with kernels and doesn't a, b, & c has nobody to blame but themselves.
--- So much for your idea of 'advanced configuration'.... I love the suse rescue DVD!!!! Of course people who play on linux, dont' play with kernels...never!!!... Um, why does suse put the multiple linux kernels on the CD including 'vanilla' (which isn't exactly, but mostly)? Are they not meant to be installed and used?
As a result, I lost the ability to do snapshots in 11.2 after some kernel update about a year ago.... Required a knew lvm lib...but that was part of the boot rpm and well enmeshed!... (Maybe it will work now on 11.4, but am a bit wary of trying it, since once opened, there was no way to close a snapshot (it would just eventually overflow and become corrupt)... Or support for linking modules into the kernel, vs. dynamically loading them -- several RC scripts would fail trying to load a module that was already loaded... not bother to check /sys/modules....) There's been TONS of issues over the years with each new update making the boot process more difficult and making everything that follows more difficult. (Like not being able to update LSM, without updating my boot-ram disk which I didn't use...)...etc...
In part this is due to the increasing complexity of booting a modern system - I see all the above as an argument for systemd. Something has to change. As a professional system's admin of 15+ years... the boot / startup process and scripts have reached a rather boggling complexity and tree of interdependency.
Have you EVER looked at a makefile? The boot complexity is ******TRIVIAL**** compared to most makefiles for the all but the smallest of projects. AFAIK, the boot.depends file is created by make -- it's trivial. Said, in all gentlenness, but you really should consider getting a different idea of 'complex'/'advanced'... (FWIW), I still think of myself at the 'medium' level of complexity in most things...though most non-CS types would say otherwise, BUT I know a bit more about what is out in the field (almost certainly a tip of an iceberg!) than the average person, and the complexity of how computers are built from the chips up. Now days, there are so many levels, even I will just throw up my hands at times and say it's 'magick'... :-).... (not seriously, but just about!).... IF you haven't tried configing a kernel, you really should try sometime. It's not that I got into "trouble" trying to boot a kernel...Of course I could boot from a working copy...I just couldn't get MY kernel to work from grub which insisted on loading a ram disk and trying to boot from that. So I went back and reconfiged for lilo, which I knew how to config directly to boot from disk. I ran into this problem when people on the Suse list started telling me I shoudl switch over to "GUID's for my disks (I prefer labels actually, but they both work via the same mechanism). And was told that everything could be done with that -- including specifying the boot and root disks. Well it was all a fabrication I found out -- simulated by the SW that runs on the RAM disk before your system script ever get called. It boots up a mini linux, which mounts a proc, so grub can then read the GUID's and labels. IT's all faked. You can't really use GUID's and labels to boot from unless you are going through some sort of pre-boot linux-environment-"emulator" (miniroot). Without going through that ram disk and booting from disk my system boots in a hair less than 30 seconds ** from Booting linux to login prompt. (that's 9.8 seconds before boot logging, See boot logging at B+9.8secs Then seeing 'Master resource control: runlevel 5 has been reached B+29.8secs. This is a machine with multiple RAID and LVM volumes. So how fast does your machine take to boot? (I'm boot from HD's, not SSD's, BTW).... though will admit to my root being a 3-disc RAID5 (50% overhead in space), but does give some read benefits.... OF course with a separate boot/root/usr partition, I can make sure my boot/root files are near the beginning of the disk for fast access. There ARE reasons why I do the things I do...arcane as they may seem... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org