On 2012/08/07 17:41 (GMT-0700) Linda Walsh composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
Now SuSE doesn't support TEXT MODE booting, because it's not in GRUB?
...
I remember that breaking in Grub when I first tried switching to grub because grub uses a graphical boot instead of BIOS VGA chip modes...
Is this is referring to GFXboot? You don't have to use it if you don't like it. Just uninstall it. And, you can ESC from it any time if plain text you want. If you're referring to what happens after making your Grub menu choice, it's all about what's on cmdline. In openSUSE I keep splashy and bootsplash uninstalled and locked out, plus 3, splash=verbose and vga=### and/or video=####X### on most of my cmdlines to ensure against accidental appearances of anything except text until after init has completed.
3-Grub shell allows to manually boot from the Grub shell, crucially handy if menu.lst is missing or otherwise problematic.
Can you use grub to boot directly from the hard disk, or do you need a ram disk to pre-boot from in order to really boot from your hard disk?
AFAIK I have no RAM disks involved with normal booting of any of my systems, unless an installation script is sneaking a temporary one into an initrd.
4-Interactive editing of initrd& kernel cmdline. 5-Chainloads NTLDR, IBM BM (at least in theory), other Grubs,& even Lilo.
lilo allows both of those
I don't remember ever typing help at a Lilo prompt and getting anything resembling a helpful response. Also I don't think Lilo allows the more elementary rendition of #4. Grub Legacy needs no menu. Once "installed" somewhere the MBR code can find, one can boot directly to a Grub prompt, from which one can locate stage1s, device.maps, kernels and initrds among other things, then boot by typing Grub commands in the same manner one uses common command shells like bash.
6-Easily configurable& installable even though booted to another OS or media. 7-Needs no files in /etc to be able to function or configure.
You mean the "System Config dir?"... why would having config dirs in the system config dir be a bad thing?
Only an overly complex bootloader like Grub2 needs to scatter the files required to make it work or get it configured to work in multiple directory trees. I can copy a tiny bundle of Grub Legacy files into one grub directory, "install" it to a bootsector by typing as little as two short lines, then initialize an operating system boot using without doing anything more before seeing a Grub prompt or menu.
And so far, I've never had problems with video... well... sorta scratch... when I boot from memory (kexec), but that doesn't count -- it's not using lilo then..
Hey, I would love to use grub if it worked...but last time I tried it -- it turned off the video during boot and I couldn't see the bootup....
Grub Legacy couldn't have been responsible for that. Something put something on cmdline, or something got left out of or misconfigured in the kernel or initrd to cause that. Grub loads a kernel, and usually an initrd, plus feeds some parameters to the kernel, same as Lilo does. What the kernel does with what it's given isn't something Grub or Lilo have any control over, not Grub Legacy anyway. Grub is another story. 2.0 is barely out, and should be called something else 1.0, as it was for all practical purposes a complete redesign, akin to the change from KDE3 to KDE4. Bugs and incomplete documentation are to be expected from anything so immature. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org