RAID/LVM Root Filesystem on SuSE8.2

[Matthew Carpenter]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



David Bandel wrote:

| Don't know that compiling with or without raid support is the problem.
|  The problem, as I see it, is in the different ways GRUB and LILO
| work.  GRUB actually reads the disk.  So it has to understand the
| filesystem and be able to read it.  LILO uses a pointer to point to
| the start of the code on the raw disk and doesn't have to understand
| anything about the underlying filesystem structure.  So LILO can load
| the kernel off any filesystem, while GRUB can only do so from
| filesystems it understands.
|
| LILO has other features GRUB doesn't that I find useful as well.

The only thing LILO does that I covet for GRUB is the "boot-next"
feature.  I suppose one could script it,  but that's a one-off solution.

I normally would agree with your understanding of LILO's operating
procedures, but I'm not sure I buy the idea that it doesn't have to
understand the underlying filesystem structure.  If the kernel fit in a
single disk cluster (ie. continuous space) that would be possible.  But
since most kernels are larger than 1MB and the largest cluster I've seen
on any systems I've supported has been 8KB, there is an awful lot of
potential for the kernel to be split and placed at various places on the
partition/LV.  DOS worked that way.  You had to literally have msdos.sys
and io.sys at the very beginning of the disk, which is why you had to
format it "with the system installed"... but that's because it was using
the default bootloader.

So that doesn't make sense to me.  Do you have some information I'm
missing which might be convincing?  While I respect your knowledge and
understanding of Linux and computers in general, this one will take some
convincing.

Thx.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCC+Tbso9lqh4MragRAqBrAJ4pz1QsUCzNn11o9161kQlkYgvLewCg3rT7
IeyeXWhrw6u0G9GVRP7Tqik=
=2WnA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----