Re: [gentoo-user] boot problems

["Stefan G. Weichinger" <lists@xunil.at>]

Am 04.05.2014 10:53, schrieb Peter Humphrey:

>> I spent nearly the whole day digging around this issue ...
> 
> You did better than I did recently: I spent four days at it.

phew! ;-)


>> I wonder if I speak for more users when I say that all this is kind
>> of confusing sometimes ...
> 
> I'm with you there, Stefan. I find the whole RAID and LVM area deeply
>  mysterious, and the docs I've seen only say what to do, not why. I'd
> still like to find a proper explanation of how it all works.

I think I understand how it works (in a somewhat higher level of being
between the plain user and the interested admin ... not understanding
all the exact details on the lowest level) .... but I always feel that
it is hard to "do it right", even when I follow howtos and dig through docs.

Maybe it is related to being interested in latest development, for sure
I have to accept hitting bugs and issues when I run unstable software.

But on the other hand:

over the years the "best practise" changes ... for example what your
fstab should/could look like or how to partition your harddrive.

Do I have to change things because it's better that way, is it worth the
effort ... ? Should I go away from RAID because LVM could stripe/mirror
by itself? Should I go away from LVM because it's kinda old technology?
... all these things to consider.

And then you get into issues with block sizes and stuff, where I always
wonder why *I* have to type all these parameters ... why doesn't modern
software just come with this knowledge inside?

 .... you know

*sigh* ;-)


>> I am not so far to skip the initramfs -> I don't *know* that, I
>> just tested removing the line from grub2 and it failed finding the
>> root-fs.
> 
> I've never had an initramfs, seeing no need in my case to keep /usr
> on its own partition.

I don't have that either ...

>> For booting from a plain partition on an SSD I think I shouldn't
>> need an initramfs? Does it have to do with MBR/GPT as well (the SSD
>> is still/again MBR, as UEFI booting broke badly for me back then)
>> ?
> 
> As far as I know, the only thing that /requires/ an initramfs is
> having a separate /usr. And I can't help you with GPT or UEFI -
> sorry.

As mentioned: I don't know if it has any benefits in my case.

My desktop once was set up to boot gentoo via UEFI (Grub2), worked OK,
then something happened and I spent hours to fix it, then went back to
BIOS/MBR. I just thought I could set that up now that I clean through my
disks and partitioning.

One of my thinkpads boots via UEFI, that was rather straight to set up
and works fine.

>> Maybe I learn more soon ;-)
> 
> I sometimes say that life is just one long journey of discovery  :-)

Definitely!

Stefan