Re: [patch] add setdefault X

[Jim Cromie]

Yoshinori K. Okuji wrote:

> On Thursday 06 November 2003 15:04, Robert Millan wrote:
>  
>
> > Including Jim's, I have a bunch of separate patches that implement that
> > feature around. I was playing with them to see if any of them can be
> > integrated. Asides copyright stuff, is that feature ok for CVS?
> >    
>
> Basically it is okay, as I understand there are some situations where boot 
> once is invaluable.
>
> But I still hope more discussion. This kind of feature is not GRUB's way 
> actually -- GRUB is intended to manage things at run time rather than at 
> installation time. And, from my point of view, those who want the feature 
> look like thinking only of "how to mimic LILO". I feel there should be a good 
> way to mix the feature with GRUB's other parts smoothly.
>  

Im not quite following.  The 'savedefault N' feature is not 
install-time, its (in my scenario) given in
the menu-entries, and activated at run-time.   I want to use it to cycle 
thru a series of different
OSs, and run a 'smoke-test' on each (where theres smoke, theres fire).

In this sense, 'savedefault N' is similar to `lilo -R`, except that its 
self-contained within
grub.conf, not strung together by a series of hacks spread across shell 
scripts in 4 or more different
OS installations.

in my patch-in-progress, I started to add

title test1
   savedefault next
   kernel ...
title test2
   savedefault next
   kernel ...
title test-last
   savedefault 0

The intent was to get position independence, so N would be more abstract.

But your installation-time comment resonates with a concern I had,
but couldnt really decide whether it was a problem:

the default is saved into the stage2 file, which I understand to be 
file-system
dependent,  (hence the reason for the --stage2=foo option).  If this is 
the case,
using next doesnt get you there - the default must be written into a 
file-system
dependent place, which is dependent on the next entry, not the current one.

OTOH - the FS dependency could be on the partition where /boot is stored,
and which doesnt depend on the OS being selected next.  (this seems
like the simpler - more correct interpretation - now that Ive gotten here).


And you said you wanted discussion :-D

>  
>
> > Btw, there's also a patch that adds a "showdefault" command.
> >    
>
> As you know, we shouldn't accept any patch without any infomation on how it is 
> useful.
>  

a 'showsettings' command might be better - all encompassing.
Id like this in both the command-line, and in a menu-entry.
Whether thats justification, or not, ...

BTW - shouldnt that be conf-entry, now that menu.lst seems to be grub.conf ?
If so, I'll work up a patch.

> Okuji
>
> .
>
>