Testing wanted: grub2 2.02~beta2-2

Fri Jan 17 11:51:20 UTC 2014

I'd like to upgrade to GRUB 2.02 for trusty; it's currently in beta.
This represents a year and a half of upstream development, and contains
many new features.  I've attached the relevant section of the NEWS file.

Obviously I want to be very careful with substantial upgrades to the
default boot loader.  So, I've put this in trusty-proposed, and filed
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1269992 to ensure
that it doesn't reach trusty proper until it's had a reasonable amount
of manual testing.  If you are already using trusty and have some time
to try this out, it would be very helpful to me.  I suggest that you
only attempt this if you're comfortable driving apt-get directly and
recovering from errors at that level, and if you're willing to spend
time working with me on narrowing down any problems that arise.

Please ensure that you have rescue media to hand before starting
testing.  The simplest way to upgrade is to enable trusty-proposed,
upgrade ONLY packages whose names start with "grub" (e.g. use "apt-get
dist-upgrade" to show the full list, say no to the upgrade, and then
pass all the relevant package names to "apt-get install"), and then
(very important!) disable trusty-proposed again.  Provided that there
were no errors in this process, you should be safe to reboot.  If there
were errors, you should be able to downgrade back to 2.00-22 (or
1.27+2.00-22 in the case of grub-efi-amd64-signed).

Please report your experiences (positive and negative) with this upgrade
in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1269992.  I'm
particularly interested in systems that are complex in any way: UEFI
Secure Boot, non-trivial disk setups, manual configuration, that kind of
thing.  If any of the problems you see are also ones you saw with
earlier versions of GRUB, please identify those clearly, as I want to
prioritise handling regressions over anything else.  I've assigned
myself to that bug to ensure that messages to it are filtered directly
into my inbox.

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]
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New in 2.02:

* New/improved filesystem and disk support:
  * Big-endian UFS1.
  * Experimental 64-bit ext2 support.
  * Various fixes for non-512-byte sector devices.
  * New `proc' filesystem framework, used by LUKS disks.
  * Fix DM-RAID partition handling.
  * New `nativedisk' command to switch from firmware to native disk drivers.
  * Compressed HFS+.
  * DragonFly BSD labels.
  * CBFS (coreboot).
  * Handle partitioned LVM properly.
  * Use LVM UUIDs whenever possible.
  * GPT PReP.
  * New `progress' module that shows progress information while reading
    files.

* New/improved terminal and video support:
  * Monochrome text (matching `hercules' in GRUB Legacy).
  * Morse code output using system speaker.
  * `spkmodem' output (simple data protocol using system speaker).
  * Handle Japanese special keys.
  * coreboot framebuffer.
  * Serial on ARC.
  * Native vt100 handling for grub-emu, replacing the use of the curses
    library.
  * New gfxmenu options for terminal window positioning, theme background
    image handling, and scrollbar padding, plus `item_pixmap_style' and
    `highlight_overlay'.
  * Support several more image types (paletted and greyscale).

* Boot protocol improvements:
  * Support Apple FAT binaries on non-Apple platforms.
  * Improve FreeDOS direct loading support compatibility.
  * Enable `linux16' on all x86 platforms, not just BIOS.
  * New TrueCrypt ISO loader.
  * multiboot2 boot-services EFI specification.
  * multiboot2 full-file specfication.

* New/improved network support:
  * New variables `net_default_*' containing properties of the default
    interface.
  * Autoload `http' and `tftp' modules if necessary.
  * Improve TFTP robustness.
  * Parse `nd' disk names in GRUB Legacy configuration files.
  * Issue separate DNS queries for IPv4 and IPv6.

* Coreboot improvements:
  * CBFS support both in on-disk images (loopback) and flash.
  * Ability to launch another payload from flash or disk
  * Coreboot framebuffer
  * CBMEMC support (both logging and inspecting logs)
  * Inspecting coreboot timestamps.
  * Inspecting coreboot tables.

* New/improved platform support:
  * New `efifwsetup' and `lsefi' commands on EFI platforms.
  * New `cmosdump' and `cmosset' commands on platforms with CMOS support.
  * Improve opcode parsing in ACPI halt implementation.
  * Use the TSC as a possible time source on i386-ieee1275.
  * Merge PowerPC grub-mkrescue implementation with the common one.
  * Support grub-mkrescue on i386-ieee1275, sparc64, bootinfo machines such
    as pSeries, and mips-arc.
  * Make grub-mkrescue better support Apple Intel Macs on CD.
  * Enable GRUB Legacy configuration file parsing on EFI.
  * Support halt for Loongson 2E.
  * ARM U-Boot and EFI ports.
  * Reorganise platform-dependent code in utilities to avoid #ifdef mess.
  * AROS and Haiku support for userspace utilities.
  * Xen PV port.
  * Fix EFI stack alignment.
  * ARM64 EFI port.
  * On Linux, read partition start offsets from sysfs if possible.
  * New grub-macbless utility, and better integration with Mac firmware in
    grub-install.
  * Support Yeeloong 3A.
  * Add `cpuid --pae' option to detect Physical Address Extension on x86.
  * Support for USB debug dongles.

* Security:
  * Add optional facility to enforce that all files read by the core image
    from disk have a valid detached digital signature.

* Performance:
  * Avoid costly division operations in many places.
  * New boot time analysis framework (`./configure --enable-boot-time').
  * Initialise USB ports in parallel.
  * New `testspeed' command to test file read speed.
  * Speed-up gfxterm by storing intermediate results in more compact format.

* Scripting:
  * New `eval' and `tr' commands.
  * grub-script-check fails on scripts containing no commands.

* Installation and other utility improvements:
  * Add option to compress files on installation or image creation.
  * Using grub-reboot no longer requires setting `GRUB_DEFAULT=saved'.
  * Support probing EFI System Partition (requires os-prober >= 1.58).
  * Fix inconsistent use of `GRUB_CRYPTODISK_ENABLE' and
    `GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK'; the latter is now used consistently.
  * grub-mount handles symbolic links to directories.
  * Support disabling submenus with `GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU' configuration key
    for grub-mkconfig.
  * grub-install, grub-mknetdir, grub-mkrescue, and grub-mkstandalone
    rewritten in C.  They should now work in supported non-Unix-like
    environments.
  * Native mingw support, including ability to install on EFI under windows.
  * Reorganise timeout handling using new `timeout_style' environment
    variable and `GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE' configuration key for grub-mkconfig.
    Menu hotkeys pressed during a hidden timeout now boot the corresponding
    menu entry immediately.
  * New `file' command and grub-file utility to check file types.
  * New syslinux configuration file parser.

* Build system:
  * Remove all uses of nested functions; GRUB no longer requires an
    executable stack.
  * Fix documentation build with Texinfo >= 5.1.
  * More robust and documented cross-compiling support.
  * Partial clang support for some platforms (experimental).
  * Partial mingw64 x86_64-efi compile support (highly experimental).
  * Partial mingw32 i386-* (other than already present i386-pc)
    compile support (highly experimental).
  * Eliminate the use of AutoGen.  This allowed some performance
    improvements to the build system.
  * Remove variable length arrays.
  * OpenBSD compile and tools support (NetBSD and FreeBSD were already supported).
  * Fix build with FreeType >= 2.5.1.
  * Make gentpl.py compatible with Python 3.  It now requires at least
    Python 2.6.
  * modinfo.sh contains build information now.
  * Added many new tests to improve robustness.

* Revision control moved to git.