----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry Stotler" To: "suse" Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:07 PM Subject: Re: [opensuse] opensuse 11, boot installed system

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 11:57 AM, jdd wrote:

...

I had a problem with installing 11 (probably remains of a beta install), and grub was not setup. so I had only XP to boot. I couldn't find in the 11 dvd (32 bits) the "boot installed system" option. I found only the repair options (as dumb as usual) did this very important option desapear?!?!

Yeah, that very useful feature was remove some time ago. Unfortunately, only a few of us said we needed it, and we failed to convince the devs to put it back in.

Now it's my turn to wail at something that was removed! :) Only, If I hear as many useful alternative solutions for this as I gave for the boot cd's, I won't wail at all, since I don't care too much how exactly a problem is solved as long as it's solved. I use the boot-installed-system option a lot. I consider it a key lifesaver utility and one of the reasons I even use suse. Admittedly just one among many many, but, on those days when grub gets scrambled, it's a lifesaver. Actually, it's nit that I use it every day exactly, it's that I use it every time I have a problem booting a system and it always works and so it's a very important thing. Like backups. You almost never use a backup, yet it is almost the most important thing in your IT system. I have been installing a lot of purely software raid boxes with 8 to 12 sata drives and raid 1, 0, and 10 arrays for boot, swap, /. The installer (in 10.3 anyways) almost always fails to generate a working grub, but, I had worked out a working system manually that I always set up after install. Once configured and working, grub is also easily broken on these boxes by yast and whatever other utils touch the grub files. I have to use boot-installed-system to get in and fix them from time to time after some updates. The boot-installed-system option has always sucessfully figured out how to boot my systems even when I couldn't manage to figure out how manually at a grub prompt. Because of that it was a great life preserver. I know if all else fails, _usually_ I can just pop the mini iso in and run that option and get back into the system in a hurry without worrying about not being enough of a wizard with mdadm and getting stuck with a system down for a long time or possibly damaged while running rarely used manual mdadm commands that could just as easily trash an array as mount it or repair it. Perforce I am by now a lot less scared of mdadm since I've done a lot of "learn by destroying" by now, but that option is still really a great tool to have in the tool box. A live cd can get you access to the same filesystems usually, if you know a lot about what devices are used and in what way, which are filesystems and which are members of an array etc and you can manually assemble arrays and mount them, but that's not nearly as useful as being able to boot into the system, and the b-i-s option figures everything out automagically and assembles and mounts all in about a second whereas manually I might have to spend quite a while looking at stuff and correlating the output of a zillion fdisk and mdadm examine/query commands. Plus, even more than for myself, it's extremely valuable to know I can tell a customer to just pop the cd in and run that option in an emergency, getting them back alive immediately and getting me in remotely so I can find and fix whatevers wrong directly, instead of trying to diagnose their boot problem over the phone with a non tech on the other end and 75 users and a whole business sitting idle or actively losing jobs as time sensative things go by. An ordinary live cd wouldn't do that customer any good. Although it might be "good enough" in that maybe with a live cd I could tell them in few enough and simple enough steps how to get the box on line and get sshd enabled so I could get in and take it from there. Maybe that script can be pulled out and plopped on a special boot cd just for that purpose, like the "super grub disk" except with an initrd with that script in it added? -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Michael Mientus wrote:

I'd like to support this feature, but I have never needed to use it. When I couldn't boot my openSuSE system I erased everything and created a partitioning/booting scheme that would work no matter what happened to openSuSE.

most problrems are on multi-OS boot systems. reinstalling windows wipes any other OS but also some systems (raid?) tricks the installer. I know also of people with business computer that don't want at all boot menu with Linux, even if Linux is installed and working and boots from cd or floppy I used this feature at least 10 time a year, and not later than 5 days ago, when my opensuse 11 install failed. jdd -- http://www.dodin.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

On 2008/06/25 20:31 (GMT+0200) jdd apparently typed:

...

reinstalling windows wipes any other OS

Popular fallacy. Not truth. It will replace Grub on MBR,

of course this is what I mean. If Linux was deleted, I couldn't boot the installed system... but usually there's

no good reason for it to be there in the first place.

no other good way, if you have XP, vista and openSUSE (vista is asking for a boot flag when XP don't) - I tried and even wrote a page for the wiki on this subject... sorry not being english native, I may not use always the very good word jdd -- Jean-Daniel Dodin Président du CULTe www.culte.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

I have no reason to think Vista's boot loader is any less capable of chainloading to Linux than XP has been perfectly capable of doing for many years.

Vista's bootloader is a fat hairy black hole pit of despair. I have had all of vista, xp, linux, freebsd, sco open server 5, and sco open server 6 (a completely different kernel and os, it's Unixware dressing in some Open Server clothes) installed on the same drive in every combination of any 4 out of the 6. It's easy in grub (or lilo, or gag), possible in xp's, freebsd's and even sco's (2 different) boot loaders beleive it or not. But editing vista's BCD is nothing remotely like any of the rest. It's probably _possible_ to use it as the first stage bootloader selector, but it was all I could do to keep vista itself booting let alone anything else. Changes to other parts of the disk that shouldn't have mattered at all kept breaking it. And, not being a text file, you can't just boot up a linux cd or even a bartpe cd and edit it to fix it. Meanwhile, not only did XP not care if some other partition changed size or gained or lost an ntfs filesystem, it didn't even mind when it itself was moved from one partition to another! Projecting _anything_ about vista based on previous experience with xp is the surest way to prove you have no idea what you are talking about, at least when you are talking to people who have actually used vista. Just as I'm sure my complaints above only prove to some vista wizard that I merely don't know the simple answer he knows. So be it. 6 OS's, 5 simple to config by plain text files, all editable by a knoppix cd if no on-disk system can boot, vs vista that requires either buying bootit-ng or somehow booting up some other full-enough copy of windows that it has .net so it can run easybcd. I hear it's possible to get .net onto a winpe cd, but I never saw one and I've customized bartpe/ubcd4win cds lots of times. Maybe there is a util on the install cd which the manufacturer didn't supply and I didn't create with the sony recovery disk creator thingy. All I can say is, you try it, _then_ say how it's no big deal. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

Not likely you started with a clean disk if you didn't have a Vista install DVD.

but we have not. closed problem... Vista dvd is not delivered with any laptop I know, only a "recovery system" and I'm experienced enough to cope with this, but this needed for me dl with emule a vista dvd only to boot and repair the vista install (no necessity to repartition). this dl is not legal (although I have a vista licence), so I wont advertise such solution as usable (nor buying a several hundred bucks vista dvd) and this is *not* the real problem. I only want to make you notice than there are situations where an inexperienced user can easily boot the 10.3 dvd and "boot the installed system" and I no no other way to do the same thing as easily. even is this could not work on some systems, it's still worth. jdd -- Jean-Daniel Dodin Président du CULTe www.culte.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org