disaster recovery Q's

Mikkel mikkel at infinity-ltd.com
Sat Nov 14 20:41:02 UTC 2009


Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> The last time I looked at pinfo grub (note the 'p', info itself is a POS) 
> cryptic was not the description that came to my mind.  Far more is left 
> unwritten than is written. IMO.
> 
I agree - info is almost unusable. I hear there are other ways to
read info files besides pinfo, but I stick to pinfo.

> And my point was Mikkel, that the contents of the initrd.img, regarding much 
> of this, are completely moot once the initrd.img file has been found and 
> loaded.  Therefore the previous posts in this and other previous threads, 
> claiming that the drive/partitions UUID's were part of the initrd.img, are in 
> fact bogus.
> 
True. The thing I was trying to clear up is that the hd(0,0) is only
used by Grub, and not the kernel. It it only used after the menu is
loaded. For example, if you did not have a /boot partition, you
might have
 kernel /boot/vmlinuz
instead of just
 kernel vmlinuz
The hd(0,0) is only used to tell Grub the base of the path. You can
also have different menu entries that use different base partitions.
For example, you could have another distribution installed with the
boot partition being partition 5 instead of 1. You would use root
hd(0,4) as the base when pointing to those kernels.

But neither specifies where the grub.conf file will be located. This
is set when you install Grub. The physical location of stage 1.5 is
written in the boot sector when you install Grub. (Usual in the
mbr.) Stage 1.5 can then read the file system to find the menu. The
stage 1.5 version is determined by the file system, and it is given
the partition and path to the config file as part of the Grub
installation process.

> But, given the lack of _good_ info on how grub really works, (IMO docs should 
> be complete enough that the function could be re-written based entirely on 
> the documentation available) such an obviously erroneous conclusion could 
> easily be drawn.
> 
Yes, the info page is hard to navigate. Unless you know what you are
looking for, you are going to have a hard time finding it. (You can
have a hard time even if you do know what you are looking for.)
About the only thing you can say for it is that it is better then
the man page. I have often wished for the writing skills to re-write
it. But that is beyond me. I do have some bits rattling around in my
head.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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