>> But I know both Marco and Pavel feel strongly about this. Please can you >> comment? >> > > I am against a configure flag (if configure is the one from configure, make, > make install) but a configure flag (as something specified in grub.cfg) is > ok.
Writing to filesystems is dangerous. Currently only grub-setup and save_env can potentially destroy data or metadata and this risk is minimised by just overwriting relevant sectors. Would you trust with your data to a write driver which hasn't been thoroughfully tested? I wouldn't. In current ro drivers we regularly find mistakes. Writing support makes driver more complex and so failure is more likely. Even a slightest mistake like putting entry in a wrong place in btree can have devastating effects (like OS not seeing half of the files). Writing files is only marginally needed for non-essential features which reduces the benefits and even decreases the chances of drivers to be tested enough. Currently grub2 does well what's supposed to do - boot OS. Making it write to FS makes it less reliable and worse at what its primary goal. How long is rw driver marked experimental in kernel? A year perhaps and it's more likely to be good tested because it 5 minutes of its use for root fs you do a lot of transactions. But grub, will you save grub.cfg 100 times at row? What are benefits? Saving environement? It's done with save_env. Only problem are checksumming FSes but 2 I'm aware about ZFS and btrfs reserve space for booter so we can embed config. Or just ask to disable checksumming on grubenv. THis can be done as a part of grubenv creation on such filesystems. Recovering OS? You should use recovery OS. You can put a kernel and initrd together with your grub for emergency cases. If grub survives disaster recovery kernel is likely to survive it too. Installing OS? You really need an installer Saving modifications done to configuration? It can be useful but it's done rarely enough to repeat it from OS if needed. Especially that grub would have trouble to modify config if script that generated is a bit more difficult than just array of menuentries I really don't want hundreds of reports "I wanted to save modified entry but grub destroyed my FS". -- Regards Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko Personal git repository: http://repo.or.cz/w/grub2/phcoder.git _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
