Re: [gentoo-user] alternative kernels

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
>
> My grub-0.99 lets me choose from four kernels and two or three run levels at
> boot time, and grub-2 can't handle this yet, or it couldn't the last time I
> checked. I don't suggest that everyone has a similar need, but at least in
> some cases the old grub does still have a place.

I doubt that grub2-mkconfig can auto-generate configs with
permutations on runlevels, but if you build a manual config for grub2
I can't see why this would not work.  You're just changing your choice
of kernel and kernel parameters.

It certainly does let you pick from multiple kernels.  Grub2-mkconfig
also supports a recovery configuration for each kernel that can have
different options, which might or might not meet your need.  You could
also create your own module for grub2-mkconfig which does whatever you
want.

Or just use manual config files.  I was doing this at first with
grub2.  I ended up ditching it for the generic mkconfig script, since
it plays well with make install on kernels and dracut.  Before I used
to make the config static and just name my kernels k/k1/k2 or some
such, rotating through names as I updated.  That works, but was a
pain.  The biggest issue I ran into with mkconfig so far was that it
doesn't always handle mainline rc kernel sorting - you'll get an rc
kernel sorted above the release version and therefore made the
default.  I did file a bug about that, so hopefully it will get fixed
some day.

--
Rich