Hello, Michael. Thanks for the reply.
On Wed, Dec 18, 2024 at 15:58:14 +0000, Michael wrote: > On Wednesday 18 December 2024 14:30:12 GMT Peter Humphrey wrote: > > On Wednesday 18 December 2024 12:13:59 GMT Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > > I've been having fun with systemd-boot. [ .... ] > > > Could somebody perhaps suggest a better boot loader to me? I need to be > > > able to chose between several kernels at booting time, but I certainly > > > don't want something "refined" like grub - I just need what I thought > > > systemd-boot actually was before yesterday. > > That's even worse than what I was suffering until I developed my own system. > > > Thanks in advance! > > Hope that helps. > If the OP is running a systemd installation then using an ESP FAT32 formatted > partition on /efi mountpoint and a XBOOTLDR partition at /boot mountpoint > would greatly simplify things and avoid conflicts between what the systemd > bootctl expects to find and wants to do and what the user prefers: > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/EFI_System_Partition#Standard_layout I'm on openRC. > On an OpenRC system without GRUB, rEFInd is a good choice, or for a totally > manual approach use the efibootmgr: > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Efibootmgr I got efibootmgr installed on one of my machines. Somebody (tm) should tell the maintainers that "File or directory not found" is an incomplete error message. It cost me around an hour till I figured out it was trying to access files on /dev/sda1 (which I don't have). Also, none of the documentation was explicit in saying that with efibootmgr, you have to go into the BIOS setup to select the kernel you want to boot. Nothing wrong with that, but if I'd know first, I wouldn't have bothered getting it working. (Sorry, it's been a strenuous evening.) rEFInd doesn't feel right, somehow. It seems to involve a graphics screen, and configuring icons in a config file. I just want want to get the system booted, with a choice of kernels at boot time, and not have all the overhead of graphics and "flexibility". I thought systemd-boot was OK, until it starting emptying my /boot partition, and booting from a partition other than the one I'd told it to. Don't we just love software which is clever? <Sigh>. It looks like I'm going to have to make some compromises, somewhere. It's a pity lilo isn't still going. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
