[gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[mad.scientist.at.large]

So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually that can handle LUKS partitions?  No uefi, but GPT would be nice.  The grub2 "documentation"  Reads like someone in the later stages of alzheimers' trying to tell you how to get to the moon from scratch?  The grub "legacy" manual was at least usefull, the grub2 manual is incoherent and has no logical structure or explanations in it.  It's insane that a boot loader takes 60 pages to document without actually explaning itself, barely useful as a reference IF you new it anyway.

Grub2 produces insanely huge configuration files, stuffed with conditionals.  It's obvious even the automatic tools don't know how to configure it, It can't figure out how to boot redcore, on the same drive though it thinks it can.  It thinks you might want to try one version of linux with the ram disk and kernel from another, which doesn't work very well and WHY?

any links to sane documentation or  sane bootloaders greatly appreciated, it'll be months before i can work on my own bootloader or extend one that makes sense out side of a corporate server farm or randomly assorted desktops that have to all work with the same config file (possibly because grub2 is deciding how to work every time it loads).

Yeah, I hate grub2.  I"m very willing to learn gentoo,  but it does make some sense and there are articles that actually explain things online.  I can't find anything usefull about grub2 other than "DON'T MANUALLY EDIT THIS FILE", if it's not human editable and understandable why even bother to have it in human readable text?


"Would you like to see us rule again, my friend?   All you have to do is follow the worms."  Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Francesco Turco]

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, at 08:05, mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:
> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually 
> that can handle LUKS partitions?  No uefi, but GPT would be nice.

I have a LUKS-encrypted system, GPT partitions, no UEFI, systemd, dracut, btrfs.

I always manually create a /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file without using the grub-mkconfig command:

timeout=-1
menuentry 'Linux-libre 5.1.15' {
  linux /@i3/vmlinuz-5.1.15-gnu rd.luks.uuid=luks-e384faa4-d3ad-4171-b38e-8961bddab43f root=UUID=90a73cbd-f378-4424-93d9-661cbfec9e5a rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=subvol=@i3 init=/lib/systemd/systemd quiet loglevel=3 rd.vconsole.keymap=it
  initrd /@i3/initramfs-5.1.15-gnu.img
}

It is pretty simple compared to what grub-mkconfig usually generates, and it works pretty well.

-- 
https://fturco.gitlab.io/

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[mad.scientist.at.large]

Thank you!  Now I don't have to read all the grub2 manual right away.  Works mostly like I thought but first attempt was to edit the mkconfig- grub.cfg and I failed to back it up Properly.  I should have tried it first on a system that didn't have 4 other distros laying around.

"Would you like to see us rule again, my friend?   All you have to do is follow the worms."  Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms




Jul 5, 2019, 1:18 AM by fturco@fastmail.fm:

> On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, at 08:05, mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:
>
>> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually 
>> that can handle LUKS partitions?  No uefi, but GPT would be nice.
>>
>
> I have a LUKS-encrypted system, GPT partitions, no UEFI, systemd, dracut, btrfs.
>
> I always manually create a /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file without using the grub-mkconfig command:
>
> timeout=-1
> menuentry 'Linux-libre 5.1.15' {
>  linux /@i3/vmlinuz-5.1.15-gnu rd.luks.uuid=luks-e384faa4-d3ad-4171-b38e-8961bddab43f root=UUID=90a73cbd-f378-4424-93d9-661cbfec9e5a rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=subvol=@i3 init=/lib/systemd/systemd quiet loglevel=3 rd.vconsole.keymap=it
>  initrd /@i3/initramfs-5.1.15-gnu.img
> }
>
> It is pretty simple compared to what grub-mkconfig usually generates, and it works pretty well.
>
> -- 
> https://fturco.gitlab.io/
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Mick]

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On Friday, 5 July 2019 08:24:14 BST mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:
> Thank you!  Now I don't have to read all the grub2 manual right away.  

Hardly anyone needs to read the whole GRUB2 manual, unless you're interest to 
know the ins and outs of GRUB2.

However, it would be advisable to skim-read at least this wiki page, which 
explains which files you could/should edit to make GRUB2 do what you want it 
to do:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2


> Works
> mostly like I thought but first attempt was to edit the mkconfig- grub.cfg
> and I failed to back it up Properly.  I should have tried it first on a
> system that didn't have 4 other distros laying around.

As per the above page, you could edit the /etc/default/grub file to define 
default variables, *then* run the grub-mkconfig command.  Depending on your 
needs you could also add files in /etc/grub.d/ or edit 40_custom.

You could create manually a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, but this is NOT how 
GRUB2 was meant to be used.  TBH, if you want to do this, then why bother with 
GRUB2 in the first place.  You could instead install sys-boot/grub-static from 
an overlay and use grub legacy by manually configuring its /boot/grub/
grub.conf file.

https://gpo.zugaina.org/sys-boot/grub-static

Alternatively, there are other bootloaders to consider, with sys-boot/syslinux 
or extlinux featuring as lightweight alternatives.
-- 
Regards,

Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Philip Webb]

190705 mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:
> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually
> that can handle LUKS partitions ?  No uefi, but GPT would be nice.

You might try Lilo, which is very simple & reliable.
I've always used it from before I started using Gentoo in 2003.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 4:10 AM Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Friday, 5 July 2019 08:24:14 BST mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:
> > Thank you!  Now I don't have to read all the grub2 manual right away.
>
> You could create manually a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, but this is NOT how
> GRUB2 was meant to be used.  TBH, if you want to do this, then why bother with
> GRUB2 in the first place.  You could instead install sys-boot/grub-static from
> an overlay and use grub legacy by manually configuring its /boot/grub/
> grub.conf file.

The only people who would tell you not to use a manual config would
also tell you not to use the old version of grub.  There is really no
reason to use the old version, except for the fact that the
documentation for manual config files on the new one is pretty opaque.

The newer version is much more versatile in terms of support for newer
filesystems, etc.  It just has a preferred mode of operation that
basically generates config files that are practically a bootloader in
themselves.  The old version isn't even in the Gentoo repo, which
means that if you do run into problems you'll be using backchannel
support.  Given that somebody just posted a ready-to-use config file
I'd start there.

All that said, it probably is worth taking the time to see if you can
bend to the tool rather than making the tool bend to you.  If you use
the standard make install kernel filenames, and edit the grub config
files in /etc appropriately, chances are it will generate a nice menu
that just works.  I used to do it the way you're looking to do it, but
find that the tools work pretty well these days and it makes it
trivial to maintain a library of old kernel versions which has helped
out with the occasional regression.

While the autogen config files are a bit complex, they are actually
editable and readable.  If you skip through all the conditional logic
you'll get to the guts of the actual menu options.  You can always
autogen a config and not send the output to the actual config file if
you want to see what it wants to do for reference.

-- 
Rich

[gentoo-user] Re: Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Grant Edwards]

On 2019-07-05, Francesco Turco <fturco@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, at 08:05, mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:

>> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure
>> manually that can handle LUKS partitions?  No uefi, but GPT would
>> be nice.
>
> I have a LUKS-encrypted system, GPT partitions, no UEFI, systemd,
> dracut, btrfs.
>
> I always manually create a /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file
> without using the grub-mkconfig command:  [...]

I used to hate grub2 with a passion and stuck with grub-legacy as long
as possible.  Then I realized that you can ignore the nightmarish
auto-magical modular AI configurator stuff.  Grub2 is still a bit
bloated for my taste, but it's just as easy to use as grub-legacy if
you configure it manually.  My grub.cfg files are just as trivial as
my grub-legacy config files were:

-----------------------------grub.cfg------------------------------
timeout=10
root=hd0,1

menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo' {
linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
}

menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo' {
linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
}
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I shudder when I contrast that with many hundreds of lines of cruft
that the mkconfig system would generate.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Inside, I'm already
                                  at               SOBBING!
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/5/19 8:04 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> it probably is worth taking the time to see if you can bend to the tool 
> rather than making the tool bend to you.

At face value, this is antithetical to how computers should work.

Computers should do our bidding, NOT the other way around.

That being said, sometimes it's the case that if you're having to bend 
to tool too much, you might be trying to do something the tool is not 
meant to do, and as such you should re-think what you're trying to do.

After that brief sanity check, by all means, bend the tool to your 
liking.  }:-)



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 5 Jul 2019 09:32:33 -0600, Grant Taylor wrote:

> > it probably is worth taking the time to see if you can bend to the
> > tool rather than making the tool bend to you.  
> 
> At face value, this is antithetical to how computers should work.
> 
> Computers should do our bidding, NOT the other way around.
> 
> That being said, sometimes it's the case that if you're having to bend 
> to tool too much, you might be trying to do something the tool is not 
> meant to do, and as such you should re-think what you're trying to do.

In the case of GRUB2 that is unlikely to be the case, as it is meant to
do everything. That's why the auto-generated config files are so long
and full of conditionals. On a system you have full control over, you
can remove all the conditionals.
 
> After that brief sanity check, by all means, bend the tool to your 
> liking.  }:-)

GRUB2 is incredibly bendy, if only the documentation were as compliant to
the wishes of its users,


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Run with scissors. Remove mattress tags. Top post. Be a rebel.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/5/19 1:57 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> In the case of GRUB2 that is unlikely to be the case, as it is meant 
> to do everything. That's why the auto-generated config files are so 
> long and full of conditionals. On a system you have full control over, 
> you can remove all the conditionals.

I had grub-mkconfig puke on me recently.  I've not spent time diagnosing 
why.

/boot was a local disk (/dev/sda1) per Gentoo install documents.

/ (root) was special in that it was /dev/nfs.

Grub (grub-mkconfig) tossed it's salad, saying:

/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of 
'192.0.2.1:/export/hostname/root'

With a return code of 1.

> GRUB2 is incredibly bendy, if only the documentation were as compliant 
> to the wishes of its users,

Sometimes I wonder just how bendy it really is.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[mad.scientist.at.large]

Ok, you convinced me i can selectively read the grub2 manual for the essential commands less scripting.  I'll try that tonight.  I would like to know where to get the source of the legacy grub that observed gentoo use flags, I'm thinking about simpler systems including a couple of 32 bit systems i'd like to use occasionally for odd services and network play (on an isolated network so i can also practice incursion and it's detection, response, and prevention).

-- Quick to the airport Robin!  We must beat the continental army to the airport or Gotham City is  lost!



Jul 5, 2019, 8:25 AM by grant.b.edwards@gmail.com:

> On 2019-07-05, Francesco Turco <fturco@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, at 08:05, mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com wrote:
>>
>>> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure
>>> manually that can handle LUKS partitions?  No uefi, but GPT would
>>> be nice.
>>>
>>
>> I have a LUKS-encrypted system, GPT partitions, no UEFI, systemd,
>> dracut, btrfs.
>>
>> I always manually create a /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file
>> without using the grub-mkconfig command:  [...]
>>
>
> I used to hate grub2 with a passion and stuck with grub-legacy as long
> as possible.  Then I realized that you can ignore the nightmarish
> auto-magical modular AI configurator stuff.  Grub2 is still a bit
> bloated for my taste, but it's just as easy to use as grub-legacy if
> you configure it manually.  My grub.cfg files are just as trivial as
> my grub-legacy config files were:
>
> -----------------------------grub.cfg------------------------------
> timeout=10
> root=hd0,1
>
> menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo' {
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
> }
>
> menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo' {
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
> }
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I shudder when I contrast that with many hundreds of lines of cruft
> that the mkconfig system would generate.
>
> -- 
> Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Inside, I'm already
>  at               SOBBING!
>  gmail.com
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Ian Bloss]

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Check out syslinux if grub is too obnoxious. I've found it much more
straight forward than grub.

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019, 2:05 AM <mad.scientist.at.large@tutanota.com> wrote:

> So, is there either a boot loader that a human can configure manually that
> can handle LUKS partitions?  No uefi, but GPT would be nice.  The grub2
> "documentation"  Reads like someone in the later stages of alzheimers'
> trying to tell you how to get to the moon from scratch?  The grub "legacy"
> manual was at least usefull, the grub2 manual is incoherent and has no
> logical structure or explanations in it.  It's insane that a boot loader
> takes 60 pages to document without actually explaning itself, barely useful
> as a reference IF you new it anyway.
>
> Grub2 produces insanely huge configuration files, stuffed with
> conditionals.  It's obvious even the automatic tools don't know how to
> configure it, It can't figure out how to boot redcore, on the same drive
> though it thinks it can.  It thinks you might want to try one version of
> linux with the ram disk and kernel from another, which doesn't work very
> well and WHY?
>
> any links to sane documentation or  sane bootloaders greatly appreciated,
> it'll be months before i can work on my own bootloader or extend one that
> makes sense out side of a corporate server farm or randomly assorted
> desktops that have to all work with the same config file (possibly because
> grub2 is deciding how to work every time it loads).
>
> Yeah, I hate grub2.  I"m very willing to learn gentoo,  but it does make
> some sense and there are articles that actually explain things online.  I
> can't find anything usefull about grub2 other than "DON'T MANUALLY EDIT
> THIS FILE", if it's not human editable and understandable why even bother
> to have it in human readable text?
>
>
> "Would you like to see us rule again, my friend?   All you have to do is
> follow the worms."  Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms
>

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[gentoo-user] Re: Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2019-07-05 14:25, Grant Edwards wrote:

> -----------------------------grub.cfg------------------------------
> timeout=10
> root=hd0,1
> 
> menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo' {
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
> }
> 
> menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo' {
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
> }
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I shudder when I contrast that with many hundreds of lines of cruft
> that the mkconfig system would generate.

This is an overstatement

matica!2 ~$ wc -l /boot/grub/grub.cfg
148 /boot/grub/grub.cfg

2 kernels, no initrd, just like yourself.

Maybe you do need to take a look at /etc/default/grub ?

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
To reply privately _only_ on Usenet and on broken lists
which rewrite From, fetch the TXT record for no-use.mooo.com.

[gentoo-user] Re: Human configurable boot loader, OR useful grub2 documentation

[Grant Edwards]

On 2019-07-09, Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org> wrote:
> On 2019-07-05 14:25, Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> -----------------------------grub.cfg------------------------------
>> timeout=10
>> root=hd0,1
>> 
>> menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo' {
>> linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.52-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
>> }
>> 
>> menuentry 'vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo' {
>> linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.14.83-gentoo root=/dev/sda1
>> }
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> I shudder when I contrast that with many hundreds of lines of cruft
>> that the mkconfig system would generate.
>
> This is an overstatement

To be fair, I should state that I've never used the autoconfig stuff
on that particular system.  When I converted from grub-legacy to
grub2, I just translated the old grub config file to the new syntax.

> matica!2 ~$ wc -l /boot/grub/grub.cfg
> 148 /boot/grub/grub.cfg

That's still a 15:1 ratio.  It appears that Gentoo is a better than
some other distros. On a fairly simple Ubuntu server system with 3
kernel versions:

    wc -l /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    265 /boot/grub/grub.cfg
 
On other distros/machines I've often seen double or triple that using
the installation defaults.  You _really_ don't want to see the auto
generated grub.cfg files on a machine with a dozen different linux
installations, each with several kernels.  Unless you disable the OS
probing module, it gets bad.

> 2 kernels, no initrd, just like yourself.
>
> Maybe you do need to take a look at /etc/default/grub ?

If you spend some time tuning things in /etc/default/grub, it gets
better. But, for my Gentoo systems I still find it far less work to
just create a grub.cfg file manually.

The semantics of /etc/default/grub also seem to vary to an annoying
extent between distros and versions.  The semantics of grub.cfg seem
to be far more stable.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Were these parsnips
                                  at               CORRECTLY MARINATED in
                              gmail.com            TACO SAUCE?