Does anyone else hate Grub2?

[jbrown96]

I've upgraded to Karmic, and all I can say is that Grub2 is a huge PITA. Here were my first experiences with it.
Installed on my laptop, but I couldn't get the provided nvidia drivers to work. No problem, I'll get them directly from nvidia and install them. Everything goes fine, and I reboot. Unfortunately, something didn't work, and my system freezes on boot. No problem, I'll just boot in single user mode, which will keep X.org from loading. Wait, where's my grub prompt. Oooo, grub2 doesn't give you the menu unless there are multiple kernels or OSes on your machine. Seriously, there's no way I can change my boot parameters without enabling the grub menu, but I can't do that because my system won't boot??? I'm literally about to tear my computer apart at this point. Stuff like this drove me to Linux. I want my machine to do what I say when I say it, but grub2 has decided that I don't get to tell it how to boot.
So get my LiveCD, and boot that up. There's no /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Instead there several configuration files. On grub1 all I had to do to get a menu was, change hiddenmenu to #hiddenmenu. Of course there's nothing like that. I think GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false this is the line that I need to change, but I'm not sure, so I change three different lines. Now I need to run update-grub just so it will load these changes??? Are you mad! And of course I can't figure out how to run this command from a LiveCD because it doesn't know where grub2 is.
This did me the menu that I needed, and I was able to fix my system very easily once I got to the terminal.
I have looked at grub since, and most of the changes make no sense to me. Instead of having all the menu items in a single file (a la /boot/grub/menu.lst), they have been moved to their own files. They are so complicated and filled with code that I can't even begin to understand them. I guess you wold add entries to /etc/grub.d/40_custom file. Seriously WTF! Why is this so complicated. There's no sample entries in here like grub1. That's really helpful; if you are adding another Linux system you can reference your current Linux entries and get an idea of the format, and it works for Windows as well because there is a Windows example in /boot/grub/menu.lst, but of course that has been eliminated in grub2.

I understand why Ubuntu was hamstringed into switching to grub2; the grub developers wouldn't add support for ext4 to grub1. I just don't understand why it's so needlessly complicated. I was so frustrated trying to do something that, in the past, took adding a single character to a well-known file. The developers completely failed at making it easy to use. I was trying to help a user install Windows alongside Ubuntu the other day. I flatly told him to install windows first because grub2 is too difficult to add an entry for windows. That's completely unacceptable. Grub2 is the new newCoke.

[Sealbhach]

I wonder what happened to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

.

[coolbrook]

I don't hate it per se. It did drop kick my Puppy partition, but I can wait for the the kinks to be ironed out.

[rajeev1204]

I dislike it very much too.

I have helped atleast 10 people on irc with grub problems with four simple steps from a live cd

sudo grub

find /boot/grub/stage1

root (hdx,y)

setup (hdx)

But with karmic around the corner and many many new users,i dont think i can do that so easy.



rajeev

[drs305]

For others that may face similar situations:

Wait, where's my grub prompt. Oooo, grub2 doesn't give you the menu unless there are multiple kernels or OSes on your machine.

Hold down the SHIFT key and the menu will appear.

There's no /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

It's been replaced by /boot/grub/grub.cfg but the file you edit is mainly /etc/default/grub

Instead there several configuration files. On grub1 all I had to do to get a menu was, change hiddenmenu to #hiddenmenu. Of course there's nothing like that. I think GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false this is the line that I need to change, but I'm not sure, so I change three different lines.

/etc/defalt/grub >> Put a comment in front of this line:
# GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0

Now I need to run update-grub just so it will load these changes??? Are you mad!

# 1 Yes; #2 I hope not.

Instead of having all the menu items in a single file (a la /boot/grub/menu.lst), they have been moved to their own files. They are so complicated and filled with code that I can't even begin to understand them.

The scripts are there for those that need or want them. By and large, most users can get by on just editing two files:
/etc/default/grub = Basic settings
/etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme = splash images

I truly do understand the frustration. For you, there wasn't a lot of documentation available. Today there are a lot of great posts and other sources put together by volunteers to make the transition less painful for others.

Most of of your experiences could have been made much less difficult had these been available when you transitioned. I offer them here to help those who follow:

Grub2 - help.ubuntu.com

Grub 2 Basics

Grub 2 Introduction

Illustrated Dual Boot Site (Herman)

Grub 2 - A Guide for Users

[murderslastcrow]

I actually like that it doesn't show up unless you have more than one option. :3 Just goes straight through. In my experience it's just as useful. Not sure if all the new features are all that great since I haven't really investigated them, but I've heard that it has a lot of unnecessary bulk?

Not sure if this is true, but since I haven't had any issues with it yet on several computers, I can't say I hate it.

[jbrown96]

I've spent some time going through all the grub files when I wrote my post. I still have no idea how I would add a new entry. Where would it go? I certainly can't generate any of the config files that are already there. If I wanted to add an entry for windows it used to be so easy. How do I do it now? If I want to install Fedora, where would I add an entry for it, and what would it look like?

Thanks for the shift command. That's really what I'm looking for. The problem that I have is grub1 showed a message "press esc for menu" and grub2 doesn't have anything like that for shift. I shouldn't need to consult online documentation for a bootloader. It's such an essential part of the system that it should A) be extraordinarily simple to use and B) include all the doucmentation necessary to operate it sanely.

Grub2 doesn't seem to be simple at all.

[drs305]

I've spent some time going through all the grub files when I wrote my post. I still have no idea how I would add a new entry. Where would it go? I certainly can't generate any of the config files that are already there. If I wanted to add an entry for windows it used to be so easy. How do I do it now? If I want to install Fedora, where would I add an entry for it, and what would it look like?

The os-prober is supposed to find other OSs when update-grub is run. Quite a few users have found the other operating systems weren't found on the initial install but were located the next time they ran it (sudo update-grub).

If your's consistently doesn't find a specific OS, the best thing to do as a workaround would probably be to add it to 40_custom. This file is imported into the menu with no changes, so it isn't updated until you change it. The good thing is that you can put whatever you want in the title (between the quotes) and it will stay there.

The 40_custom file is in the /etc/grub.d/ folder.
Open it for editing:

gksu gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom

Here is a sample Windows entry:

menuentry "Windows Vista from 40_custom" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,1)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set CFFCFF9EECFF7F49
chainloader +1
}

The partitioning is different in Grub 2. The first drive is still 0 but the first partition is now one. (sdb3 is drive 2, partition 3 for example).
Save the file and run "sudo update-grub" and see what happens on the next boot.

I am not familiar with Fedora so I don't know what the entry would be, but in general other linux entries look like:

menuentry "Jaunty 2.6.28-15-custom" {
set root=(hd0,7)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-15-custom root=UUID=12c55255-27b3-488b-hje7e-9dbe4e2esfg5 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-15-custom
}

[jbrown96]

The os-prober is supposed to find other OSs when update-grub is run. Quite a few users have found the other operating systems weren't found on the initial install but were located the next time they ran it (sudo update-grub).

If your's consistently doesn't find a specific OS, the best thing to do as a workaround would probably be to add it to 40_custom. This file is imported into the menu with no changes, so it isn't updated until you change it. The good thing is that you can put whatever you want in the title (between the quotes) and it will stay there.

The 40_custom file is in the /etc/grub.d/ folder.
Open it for editing:

gksu gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom

Here is a sample Windows entry:


The partitioning is different in Grub 2. The first drive is still 0 but the first partition is now one. (sdb3 is drive 2, partition 3 for example).
Save the file and run "sudo update-grub" and see what happens on the next boot.

I am not familiar with Fedora so I don't know what the entry would be, but in general other linux entries look like:

Thanks that does help. I'm not asking for tech support per say. I was just using it as an example, but that will help if I need to do it. I had no idea that update-grub actually looks for other operating systems to add. The great part about it is that the man page for update-grub is

UPDATE-GRUB(8) UPDATE-GRUB(8)

NAME
update-grub - stub for grub-mkconfig

SYNOPSIS
update-grub

DESCRIPTION
update-grub is a stub for running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to generate a grub2 config file.

SEE ALSO
grub-mkconfig(8)

April 2009 UPDATE-GRUB(8)

And grub-mkconfig is

GRUB-MKCONFIG(8) System Administration Utilities GRUB-MKCONFIG(8)

NAME
grub-mkconfig - manual page for grub-mkconfig (GNU GRUB 1.97~beta4)

SYNOPSIS
grub-mkconfig [OPTION]

DESCRIPTION
Generate a grub config file

-o, --output=FILE
output generated config to FILE [default=stdout]

-h, --help
print this message and exit

-v, --version
print the version information and exit

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-grub@gnu.org>.

This gets back to my core complaint. Why is everything so damn different and undocumented? There's no indication that update-grub is looking for other OSes. In fact, the only thing that it says it does is take some unmentioned config files and turn them into a giant goobily-gook of a file at /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

Here's actually a question with a system that I have. Grub always fails to boot on it. It mentions something about the env failing. I can get to the menu and edit the entry. The second line causes the problem; it's something about setting an environment variable on failure. I delete the line then ctrl+x to boot. The stupid thing is that I have to do this every time I boot because I have no idea where this menu entry is, so I can't delete the second line, which seems to be useless anyways (no I take that back -- it exists solely to **** me off).

[Xbehave]

1) I really don't get the point of it
2) It wont let me secure my PC by locking old kernels

For others that may face similar situations:
It's been replaced by /boot/grub/grub.cfg but the file you edit is mainly /etc/default/grub

In particular this is stupid because i boot multiple distros so having a single manually configured /boot/grub/menu.conf means no distro ever steps on another's toes.