I can not express enough how badly I HATE Grub2!!!!

English Soapbox
1

I can not express enough how badly I HATE Grub2!!! What is worse, Opensuse has borked the install to the point it seems impossible to go back. And yes, I will swim upstream as someone put it, because I always say, if it aint borked, don’t fix it!!! SHEESH! What an abortion. IT wouldn’t be so bad if you had tools to work with it, but you do not. So as a result we are stuck with a mess we can’t work with. Heck, even you guys apparently don’t understand it fully, since every single install of this stoopid grub2 generates an error on every single system that boots. Something about .gz file not found.

I tried a reinstall and removed the grub2 packages to see if that works. NOPE. I tried to rewind it via yast, but unfortuntely it is buggy. It will not pull the data,so you end up with nothing. I think… too late for me now, but I think if you pull the “saved hd” data, you can manually enter and be back to grub. I will play with this for yet another hour or two till I can control it.

2

lshantz, your post has been moved to Soapbox where it belongs. Please refrain from adding in complaints to an existing message thread that was asking for help. You are not asking for help and so your message has been moved.

Thank You,

3

Please read this post :
https://forums.opensuse.org/english/other-forums/community-fun/soapbox/478183-grub2-not-good.html#post2485626

It might just have a cure for your hate :slight_smile:

4

On 2013-02-20, lshantz <lshantz@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> I can not express enough how badly I HATE Grub2!!! What is worse,
> Opensuse has borked the install to the point it seems impossible to go
> back.

I actually share your dislike (albeit don’t hate) Grub2. Personally I think it is entirely wrong and not safe practice
of openSUSE to make Grub2 the default bootloader when openSUSE freely admit that (like BTRFS) it’s still at an
experimental stage. Actually I’m surprised by this decision given how openSUSE usually prefers to err on the side of
conservatism. Fortunately at least openSUSE still offers the most sensible workaround of opting for Grub Legacy.

> I tried a reinstall and removed the grub2 packages to see if that
> works. NOPE. I tried to rewind it via yast, but unfortuntely it is
> buggy.

Well trying just to remove the Grub2 packages is where you went wrong, so it’s not fair to blame YaST. The easiest way
to change bootloader is to click on YaST’s Boot Loader icon and change it within the dialog box. Simple. It’s not rocket
science even if the boot loader icon depicts a rocket :slight_smile: .

On a more serious note, I would think it wise to continue to use Grub Legacy for as long as openSUSE allows it. It
doesn’t need to be clever or pretty any more than a BIOS POST. It just needs to work, and my personal experience of
Grub2 is that this definitely cannot be assumed. Even when it does work, it never seems to allow setting a post-1980s
resolution for the virtual consoles…

5

Hate? No. Dislike it? Not yet, even after yesterday when replacing 11.4 with a clean install of 12.2 on a multi-boot system, and my first outing with Grub2. It didn’t quite end up as planned, even though Grub2 (installed to 12.2’s boot partition) does boot all systems present via a reasonable graphic menu. However by accident, the main boot loader is still the previous installation’s familiar Grub Legacy menu. Thus dispelling the myth that Grub Legacy cannot boot Grub2, it obviously can by chain loading. I need to review my chosen settings in the YaST Installer, against the Help descriptions and the resulting boot sequence. If I find anything odd, I will post it.

Surprising decision by openSUSE? Well not after similar decisions made for KDE4, PulseAudio, and probably other more recent examples. Not so conservative, after all. History therefore tells me you have a point re the default bootloader.

Removing grub2 files sounds bizarre. Why not reinstall using Grub Legacy? Also missing, is any explanation of what original grub2 boot selections were made for or by the YaST Installer, right?

6

On 2013-02-20 11:55, flymail wrote:
> On 2013-02-20, lshantz <lshantz@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>>
>> I can not express enough how badly I HATE Grub2!!! What is worse,
>> Opensuse has borked the install to the point it seems impossible to go
>> back.
>
> I actually share your dislike (albeit don’t hate) Grub2. Personally I think it is entirely wrong and not safe practice
> of openSUSE to make Grub2 the default bootloader when openSUSE freely admit that (like BTRFS) it’s still at an
> experimental stage. Actually I’m surprised by this decision given how openSUSE usually prefers to err on the side of
> conservatism. Fortunately at least openSUSE still offers the most sensible workaround of opting for Grub Legacy.

I also dislike grub2, but not hate it. I find it exceedingly complex. I
would prefer this route for UEFI machines:

Bootloader
Restructured To Allow Linux To Work On Windows 8 PCs Easily (link
courtesy of Basil Chupin in the opensuse factory mail list; see thread
“IS grub2 dead or not?!”)

+++····························
The Linux Foundation is waiting for Microsoft to sign the newly
submitted bootloader version and will offer the new version to users for
free once released.

Saturday, February 02, 2013: The Linux Foundation has sponsored a major
revamp of the mini bootloader to help users to launch any version of
Linux on computers that come with UEFI Secure Boot. Whenever UEFI Secure
Boot is talked along with Linux, the first thought that comes to our
mind is Windows 8. Though UEFI Secure Boot is not something new or
synonymous with Windows 8 but Microsoft made Secure Boot popular
particularly when it was initially discovered that Windows 8 devices
won’t allow Linux to boot.

The restructuring of the bootloader boots in a different manner,
allowing it to work well together with Gummiboot. Unlike GRUB, the
Gummiboot accesses the EFI mechanisms before starting Linux. So, the
Gummiboot keeps the structure simple as compared to GRUB. However, when
the user has activated the Secure Boot, the procedure changes and other
firmware-related mechanisms comes to play to verify the kernel before
launching it.

Explaining the cause of restructuring the bootloader, James Bottomley
wrote in his blog post, “The gist of the problem is that GregKH
discovered in early December that the proposed Pre-BootLoader wouldn’t
work in its current form with Gummiboot. On investigation, the reason
was simple: Gummiboot was created to demonstrate you could make a small
and simple bootloader that takes advantage of all the services available
in the UEFI platform instead of being the massive link loader that
things like grub are.”
····························+±

The problem is those machines with BIOS only, and disks over 2 TiB in
size used for boot. Then you need grub2.

I don’t know if there are other special circumstances that require grub2
in UEFI systems. LVM? RAID? Encryption?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

7

I confess I don’t dislike grub2, but I am afraid to try it.

So before any install I back up the mbr on to a memory stick with an appropriate ‘dd’ command (with custom arguments), and then I install only from DVD and I am careful to select the legacy grub, with appropriate settings. Thus far that legacy grub install has worked fine for me in 12.2 and 12.3 milestone, beta and RC versions.

I did put Grub2 (from a 64-bit openSUSE-12.2 KDE install) on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop, but that has a very very very simple partioning, of only Windows7 and openSUSE. No other OS partitions. Maybe later this year I might get bold enough to try grub2 on a more complex multiple hard drive with multiple partitioning setup.

8

I’m not afraid of it, and I am using it. But I do dislike it, mostly because it is unnecessarily complex.

I am particularly annoyed at Fedora 18, which just went ahead and installed grub2 in the MBR. The Fedora people seem to have bought into the idiotic religion that grub2 should never be installed in a partition boot record.

9

On Wed 20 Feb 2013 06:06:01 PM CST, nrickert wrote:

oldcpu;2528793 Wrote:
> I confess I don’t dislike grub2, but I am afraid to try it.

I’m not afraid of it, and I am using it. But I do dislike it, mostly
because it is unnecessarily complex.

I am particularly annoyed at Fedora 18, which just went ahead and
installed grub2 in the MBR. The Fedora people seem to have bought into
the idiotic religion that grub2 should never be installed in a partition
boot record.

Hi
I use gummiboot/UEFI, works fine for me, plus there is now a setup
program included. I added some extra scripts to do some maintenance
in my build (W.I.P).

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.28-2.20-desktop
up 2 days 1:52, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
CPU Intel® i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | GPU Intel® Ironlake Mobile

10

lol!
zypper se gummiboot
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
No packages found.

11

Take a look here:
software.opensuse.org - gummiboot search

its in the Malcolmlewis testing repository.

12

Thanks oldcpu :wink:

Note my gummiboot-efi-mkconfig script is still W.I.P, I need to strip out the delete call on old kernels if your using multiple kernels…

13

Just taking a reality check on behalf of users of standard openSUSE.

I personally don’t need it, least of all from a :home source. I probably don’t even need grub2 (as in the thread topic), but the openSUSE god won’t turn miracles for grub legacy if it catches something unpleasant :slight_smile:

14

So noted :wink:

Need to start building/testing somewhere… I prefer it these days over grub2 for it’s simplicity, plus once I set the default and timeout to 0, never see it… It just requires some manual intervention on a kernel update.

15

Indeed. Given my first grub2 (12.2) has ended up chain loaded from grub legacy (12.3 RC1), I see them almost together each day now.

Legacy is plain, very clear text white on black, with entry names, kernel releases, partition identifiers. Grub2 is a more polished graphic; with logos (full colour for W7 entry) and only the default openSUSE entry has a logo; entry names truncated (no room for kernel release or partition id’s); and each linux entry now has two lines, the second being an “advanced” entry for its failsafe boot. I don’t recall ever using my default entry’s failsafe, the only one added on legacy. Guess which one is the quickest for visual and physical selection of the entry to boot? Yes legacy, at least for me it is the easier to use and edit.

There is no question Grub2 is more complex, and now I really need to customize the menu entries, ouch. Well it’s more visually polished, but it’s only on-screen for seconds.

16

On 2013-02-21, consused <consused@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> There is no question Grub2 is more complex, and now I really need to
> customize the menu entries, ouch. Well it’s more visually polished, but
> it’s only on-screen for seconds.

+1. There’s no need for it to be visually polished any more than a BIOS POST. I admit that Grub legacy’s penguins are a
welcome cheer around Christmas but ultimately a boot loader just needs to work and be readily configurable - and I find
that it is not safe to assume that Grub2 is always going to deliver on both counts.

17

Penguins!!! The only non-technical plus point in Grub2’s favour. :smiley:

Please, no invaders especially during boot.

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On 2013-02-21 13:36, consused wrote:
> Penguins!!! The only non-technical plus point in Grub2’s favour. :smiley:

O against. I like those penguins.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

19

Me too. Every October I prepare around 100 posts for replies to virus reports, assumed religious attacks etc, wouldn’t want to miss that… :stuck_out_tongue:

20

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:16:01 +0000, Knurpht wrote:

> robin_listas;2529025 Wrote:
>> On 2013-02-21 13:36, consused wrote:
>> > Penguins!!! The only non-technical plus point in Grub2’s favour. :smiley:
>>
>> O against. I like those penguins.
>>
>> –
>> Cheers / Saludos,
>>
>> Carlos E. R.
>> (from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
>
> Me too. Every October I prepare around 100 posts for replies to virus
> reports, assumed religious attacks etc, wouldn’t want to miss that…
> :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, and don’t forget those in the southern hemisphere who want to know
why there’s a winter theme in the middle of the summer. :wink:

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C