Bug 46828

Summary:	GRUB authors recommend use of grub-install and request to put in links to official documentation
Product:	[OLD] Docs-user	Reporter:	Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) <swift>
Component:	Handbook	Assignee:	Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) <swift>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	docs-team
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---
Attachments:	Patch to hb-install-{x86,amd64}-bootloader.xml

Description Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2004-04-05 00:39:43 UTC

The following mail was sent to www@gentoo.org:

"""
I am the official maintainer of GNU GRUB, and I'd like to talk about the
handbook on www.gentoo.org. In this page:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=9

you give information on how to make use of GRUB. But I see some
important problems there.

One of them is that it has no pointer to the official site of GNU GRUB,
the GRUB manual or the GRUB FAQ. We see many Gentoo users asking
questions without reading the manual, and I'm personally wondering if
this can be solved if you put some links to more detailed information
and encourage users to read the manual before asking. Here are the
resources:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-faq.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/

Another problem is that it recommends using the grub shell directly
rather than grub-install. As written in the manual, we cannot recommend
this, because it can produce bad consequences due to disk cache
problems in Linux. We have implemented many workarounds in the script
grub-install, and we hope you will utilize them to overcome
difficulties in installing a boot loader.

If you don't want to use grub-install for some reason, please implement
the same workarounds in the handbook or your own script. Otherwise, we
get many bug reports about problems that we have already solved with a
lot of effort.

Since Gentoo is a volunteer-based project as well as GRUB, I bet that
you could understand my point, and we would be able to help each other.
If you have any question or problem, feel free to send e-mail to
<bug-grub@gnu.org>.

Thanks,
Okuji
"""

I'll apply the necessary patches to hb-install-x86-bootloader.xml and hb-install-amd64-bootloader.xml to fix this.

Comment 1 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2004-04-05 00:40:50 UTC

Created attachment 28718 [details, diff]
Patch to hb-install-{x86,amd64}-bootloader.xml

This patch is applicable to both files. I'll commit those in a few hours unless
there are any objections.

Comment 2 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2004-04-05 11:31:27 UTC

Committed to CVS.