[gentoo-dev] Comments on the new "from source" (build) CD Installation page

[gentoo-dev] Comments on the new "from source" (build) CD Installation page

[Collins Richey]

Congratulations on a fine document.  I like the new style - finally a
date last updated!!!

Having installed and worked with _rc5 and various other distros in the
past few months, I've come across one glitch in the otherwise letter
perfect installation process - the grub vs. lilo issue.

I (and perhaps others in your audience) have a multi-boot machine. 
I'm currently running from a jblinux distro while waiting for _rc6 to
jell, although I still boot from _rc5 from time to time.  jblinux is
probably the only distro to offer an XFS file system.  Unfortunately
the good folks at grub have never heard of XFS, so lilo is the only
way to boot from an XFS partition.  You should offer lilo as an
alternative, or at least warn people that it may not be a good thing
to write grub to their mbr, if they have other bootable distros to
worry about.

The thing I like most about lilo is that a simple change to
boot=/dev/fd0 will create a boot floppy so that you don't have to
worry about messing with your normal boot setup until you know the new
_rc6 system is stable.  It's more complicated, but doable, to create a
grub boot floppy, but that would also be an alternative.

Just my $.02.

-- 
Collins Richey
Denver Area
jblinux 2.2 xfce sylpheed opera

Re: [gentoo-dev] Comments on the new "from source" (build) CD Installation page

[Daniel Robbins]

On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 06:22:40PM +0700, Collins Richey wrote:
> Congratulations on a fine document.  I like the new style - finally a
> date last updated!!!
> 
> Having installed and worked with _rc5 and various other distros in the
> past few months, I've come across one glitch in the otherwise letter
> perfect installation process - the grub vs. lilo issue.
> 
> I (and perhaps others in your audience) have a multi-boot machine. 
> I'm currently running from a jblinux distro while waiting for _rc6 to
> jell, although I still boot from _rc5 from time to time.  jblinux is
> probably the only distro to offer an XFS file system.  Unfortunately
> the good folks at grub have never heard of XFS, so lilo is the only
> way to boot from an XFS partition.  You should offer lilo as an
> alternative, or at least warn people that it may not be a good thing
> to write grub to their mbr, if they have other bootable distros to
> worry about.

As long as the *boot* partition isn't XFS, all should go well.  The root
partition should still be able to be XFS, since it is accessed directly
by the kernel.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins					<drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President			http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.			

Re: [gentoo-dev] Comments on the new "from source" (build) CD Installation page

[Collins Richey]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001 18:33:05 -0600 Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>
wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 06:22:40PM +0700, Collins Richey wrote:
> > Congratulations on a fine document.  I like the new style -
> finally a
> > date last updated!!!
> > 
> > Having installed and worked with _rc5 and various other distros in
> the
> > past few months, I've come across one glitch in the otherwise
> letter
> > perfect installation process - the grub vs. lilo issue.
> > 
> > I (and perhaps others in your audience) have a multi-boot machine.
> > I'm currently running from a jblinux distro while waiting for _rc6
> to
> > jell, although I still boot from _rc5 from time to time.  jblinux
> is
> > probably the only distro to offer an XFS file system. 
> Unfortunately
> > the good folks at grub have never heard of XFS, so lilo is the
> only
> > way to boot from an XFS partition.  You should offer lilo as an
> > alternative, or at least warn people that it may not be a good
> thing
> > to write grub to their mbr, if they have other bootable distros to
> > worry about.
> 
> As long as the *boot* partition isn't XFS, all should go well.  The
> root
> partition should still be able to be XFS, since it is accessed
> directly
> by the kernel.
> 

In my case it's both partitions.  I'm always concerned when distros
cavalierly (IMHO) offer to put a boot loader in the mbr before it's
known that this will work.  Alas, almost every distro does it this
way.  At least on the jblinux distro (for example), I was able to
choose to write the lilo boot stuff to floppy.  

I just think it would be worth at least a note in the install
document.

-- 
Collins Richey
Denver Area
jblinux 2.2 xfce sylpheed opera