81–90 of 108 posts
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grub is just a operating system. it is quite good when shit hits the fan
~90% of the failure modes grub can fix don't exist without grub. I can't remember any time when its needless complexity was actually a net benefit compared to literally any of its alternatives (and between gummiboot/syslinux/efilinux/isolinux/systemd-boot/efistub I've used a lot of them).
Friends don't let friends use grub. rEFInd is _so_ much simpler: one efi entry, one text config file in the efi partition, nothing that needs to change when the kernel updates, and no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub “rescue” shell.
There's also systemd-boot, which seems to be getting more popular. https://systemd.io/BOOT/
That said, I'm probably going to try a straight EFI boot on my next laptop.
Nice. I'm extra fond of ZFS backed network root filesystem, because it lets you put an OS on ZFS without needing to deal with ZFS support in that OS. (One of these days I want to try OpenBSD with its root on NFS on ZFS, either from Linux or FreeBSD.) Does anyone have an opinion on iSCSI vs NBD?
Unfortunately in this specific case (diskless booting) dracut support still sucks, which I really need to get around to fixing at some point.
Ansible? Amazing amount of complexity for something so simple. Sigh ... Linux. It's just a commercial toaster to me these days.
I net boot 9front and it takes 5 minutes to setup. Plus it's all built in so you don't need to install anything. Just enable tfp and dhcp on the 9 machine (no issue for me since 9 runs my network) then setup a few lines in your ndb file for the machine you want to boot which includes Mac, IP and boot image file. Then you need a simple plan9.ini and boot scripts for the machine in /cfg/. Last, a quick change to the root file server to listen on IP Then power on the machine and it boots from the same root fs so your starting at your desktop on a new machine. Done. Why make something so awesome so difficult?
This is by no means the only way to implement this, an I’m sure there are better ways.
Thank you for the feedback, I’ll edit it and add more points on alternative stacks and the iSCSI network pickiness.
> apt install apache2 git ansible tftpd-hpa targetcli-fb Ansible? Amazing amount of complexity for something so simple. Sigh ... Linux. It's just a commercial toaster to me these days. I net boot 9front and it takes 5 minutes to setup. Plus it's all built in so you don't need to install anything. Just enable tfp and dhcp on the 9 machine (no issue for me since 9 runs my network) then setup a few lines in your ndb fil…
That's more interesting than the netboot thing. Is 9front running your router? What do you do for WiFi? Have you written this up, and/or could you point me to any references for doing it?
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Does it offer performance advantages over NFS root?
They operate at different layers. iscsi is a block device: you gain a 'disk drive' sitting on your network. A dedicated network for disk traffic and use it to host on-prem virtualization. It's called a SAN array.
Friends don't let friends use grub. rEFInd is _so_ much simpler: one efi entry, one text config file in the efi partition, nothing that needs to change when the kernel updates, and no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub “rescue” shell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just use systemd-boot which uses BLS thus there are no config files.
BLS means many config files instead of one, not zero config files.
Which ones? If you want to all you need is a single UKI in /EFI/Linux and everything is synthesized from that.