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It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

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Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#51

Post by acka »

jorvi wrote: post #5
raggi wrote: post #4

Grubs install process is a complete disaster. I went to use it to boot Fuchsia on bios systems at one point, when Zircon still supported multiboot chaining. The "install" scripts and so on are all horribly broken, and extremely badly behaved in terms of grabbing arbitrary stuff from the environment that has nothing to do with your desired target system. Using them for anything other than modifying the current host sy…

> The whole thing seems like an accident of history that no one wants to fix I can’t really speak to Fuchsia systems, but a lot (most?) Linux desktop distros use stub or systemd-boot bootloading these days. And if you want to get fancy, there’s rEFInd.

Don't forget Syslinux[0], available for both legacy BIOS systems as well as EFI. All binaries except for the really low level stuff are in ELF format, so can be generated, linked and manipulated by tools which support this.

[0]: https://wiki.syslinux.org/

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#52

Post by cycomanic »

usr1106 wrote: post #26

So assuming your machine supports UEFI, what are the common use cases that systemd-boot would not support, requiring you to use grub? Encrypted boot partition I'd guess? I tried that once with grub, but it was unbearingly slow, because grub did not / could not use modern x86 extensions to do the decryption. So not a common use case either, maybe a desirable one.

One of the use cases is booting into btrfs snapshots automatically. AFAIK systemd-boot still does not support this.

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#53

Post by crabbone »

chungy wrote: post #9
ur-whale wrote: post #7

> It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu It's far from clear how grub works, uprade or otherwise, period. Much less how to configure it or install it. Sendmail.cf or jq level configuration language in terms of obscurity. Cryptic error messages the severity of which is impossible to infer (actual impact being from no impact whatsoever to my computer won't boot anymore). Not my favorite piece of Li…

It's pretty well documented with a pretty simple configuration language (if you already use a bourne shell (and you probably do), you already know how GRUB's syntax works). I guess reading the manual isn't popular these days, but GRUB has a complete one that explains it all.

Configuration in Bourne Shell is already a bad idea, documented or not. Add on top of it is that there isn't really a configuration... you edit some files (multiple!) then you need to know to run some other script, that on different distribution of Linux will be called differently (if it at all exists) to generate this configuration from another configuration. And the added bonus is that this script will also sometimes run when upgrading some (typically completely unrelated) packages, and if you were so naive as to try and edit the configuration w/o running the script, your changes will be undone without warning.

Configurations are supposed to use a languages that is just powerful enough to express it. The more declarative the better. Shell is a very bad configuration language because it allows to do way too much and is very forgiving of errors.

Now, add to this that GRUB installation is trying to do configuration too... and if you are doing stuff like creating VM images or similar, where you have to install packages in an environment that's not a real physical computer with a bunch of periphery attached, you will run into all sorts of problems (because for some reason GRUB wants to have a PTY and a bunch of other devices / pseudo-filesystems that it has no business sticking its fingers into) and if you aren't present at the keyboard during package upgrade / install you might not even notice that GRUB has failed to install / install correctly.

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#54

Post by crabbone »

c0l0 wrote: post #28
userbinator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, GRUB is unnecessary complexity for probably 99.9% of all systems that boot Linux and maybe one other OS.

... can you really fault software that has "Grand" and "Unified" right there in its name for trying to be just that? The number of systems supported by GRUB is really impressive, the number of special-sauce features supported (filesystems, RAID levels, snapshots, etc.) downright staggering. And if you don't like it, there's plenty of alternative, simpler options with a narrowere focus. I use systemd-boot on most non-…

The complexity of GRUB isn't justified by the number of systems it has to support. The number of supported systems is also not the reason why GRUB is so complex. The cause of complexity is poor design choices, if you can even call it that, when it comes to configuration and defaults.

It doesn't matter that better options exist. GRUB is the subject of this discussion. If it were about systemd-boot, then it would've been legitimate to complain about it or to praise it. But, it's not the subject.

But, since you mentioned "other options"... they are both the indication of the larger problem: Linux boot process is poorly designed and that's why many independent teams tried to replace it to variable degree of success. GRUB isn't the only poorly designed piece of this process. And they work to obscure and make even less accessible the subject of system booting for the wider audience, creating a feedback loop where the only few people brave enough to dive in and try to understand it are the people who started way back and usually have very distorted ideas about how their code is used by the layers built on top of it.

The whole of the booting process didn't need to be this complex: it could have fewer stages, fewer utilities that are responsible for different stages, fewer possible boot scenarios, better defined order of device initialization... the list goes on. GRUB is only a part of the larger problem, albeit it's a big part.

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#55

Post by qwertox »

Speaking of the devil: I just upgraded an Ubuntu install which I hadn't touched for around a month, and after rebooting I'm unable to boot Ubuntu.

It's very odd. Instead of the GRUB menu, only a countdown number shows up on the top-left (5,4,3,..) with an underscore behind it. "5 _". All the rest is black.

When the countdown finishes, the system boots into the (UEFI) BIOS.

If I use the BIOS' boot disk selector, then it also happens both when I directly select the Ubuntu installation as well as when I select the GRUB bootloader.

I hope I'll enjoy the ride.

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#56

Post by hh3h33hhh3 »

Linux feels like a jumbled mess, akin to a box of LEGO where none of the pieces fit together. With countless package managers, desktop environments, and distros, etc. it's a chaotic maze of choices. Yet, despite the abundance, usability remains a distant dream. It's frustratingly disappointing, to say the least.

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#57

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

DaSHacka wrote: post #10
jorvi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole thing seems like an accident of history that no one wants to fix I can’t really speak to Fuchsia systems, but a lot (most?) Linux desktop distros use stub or systemd-boot bootloading these days. And if you want to get fancy, there’s rEFInd.

> I can’t really speak to Fuchsia systems, but a lot (most?) Linux desktop distros use stub or systemd-boot bootloading these days. Which ones are you thinking of? Most 'desktop' distros I've used recently still default to Grub (Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Ubuntu) though I'd certainly be glad if change is on the horizon.

I didn't know systemd had its own bootloader. I thought everything was still GRUB, I think all my systems are GRUB.

Course I'm a few years out of date

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#58

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

hh3h33hhh3 wrote: post #56

Linux feels like a jumbled mess, akin to a box of LEGO where none of the pieces fit together. With countless package managers, desktop environments, and distros, etc. it's a chaotic maze of choices. Yet, despite the abundance, usability remains a distant dream. It's frustratingly disappointing, to say the least.

It's about the only game in town though. BSD isn't popular enough and Windows wants to be a cable TV channel

Re: It's far from clear how grub package updates work on Ubuntu

#60

Post by tuna74 »

hh3h33hhh3 wrote: post #56

Linux feels like a jumbled mess, akin to a box of LEGO where none of the pieces fit together. With countless package managers, desktop environments, and distros, etc. it's a chaotic maze of choices. Yet, despite the abundance, usability remains a distant dream. It's frustratingly disappointing, to say the least.

Linux is an OS kernel running everything from toasters to the largest HPC clusters. The user space will differ depending on what you want to do.
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