[Techtalk] Changing the Grub setup

[Akkana Peck]

David Sumbler writes:
> Is there any advantage in having things set up this way?  I would prefer
> to see the actual menu which is currently on /dev/sda2 .  Could, and
> should I simply transfer the /boot directory from /dev/sda2
> to /dev/sda1, replacing the one that's there?  Or how do I build the
> thing properly in that location, if it's a good idea?

I guess the advantage is that it's easier to compartmentalize
different parts of your grub setup so you can make automated scripts
to update the grub menu when new kernels appear.

But it's not worth the disadvantages -- grub2 makes it very painful to
maintain multi-boot setups, where you have one shared /boot partition
and several different distro roots on the same machine.

I flamed about it in a lightning talk at SCALE last year. Here's
a transcript, with a link to several Linux Planet articles I wrote
describing the problems and some workarounds.
http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/grub2-lightning.html

But the best workaround is just not to use grub2. grub1 still works
(though it's no longer maintained), and syslinux is a nice, clean
alternative that *is* maintained (even better, the author is Peter
Anvin, a longtime LinuxChix member).

	...Akkana