On Thursday 21 September 2006 19:34, Robert Millan wrote: > Sure. The purpose of realpath here isn't really to verify device > existance; that ought to happen later if (and only if) we're actualy going > to use that device. > > Suppose this device.map: > > (hd0) /dev/hda > (xxx) /dev/idontexist > > Theoricaly, when grub-setup is told to act on (hd0) it shouldn't care that > /dev/idontexist doesn't exist (it could be listed because it was generated > by an older grub, because the device disappeared, etc). However, because > of the realpath canonicalisation, as a collateral result we get to abort if > _any_ of the entries are wrong:
I understand what you mean. Thank you. > My point is that grub should be fault tollerant and not care that > /dev/idontexist is broken, specialy since device.map is a file that is > subject for input from either user or older grub (including grub legacy), > and we have little control about its contents. I describe my own opinion here. GRUB itself must be extremely fault-tolerant, as the user cannot boot up a machine if GRUB fails. However, the installer of GRUB must be extremely error-sensitive, as the user cannot boot up a machine if the installation happens _wrongly_. If a device map contains any error, it's likely that the user made some mistake or skip over erroneous information. Personally I much, much prefer that GRUB is not installed in this case. Failing in installing GRUB is better than making a machine unbootable. Okuji _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
