GRUB vs. GAG

[Duncan Lithgow]

On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 23:25 +0530, Cheatah 0#@!^ wrote:
> i was running kubuntu 6.06 and winxp on my system. i had some problems
> with my windows so i formatted the drive and reinstalled windows. now
> i cant see the boot menu(grub) and the windows automatically boots. is
> my linux installation completely gone or just the booting is taken
> control by windows?? if so how can i return to grub boot loader??
You'll keep getting lots of people telling you how to avoid and fix this
problem using GRUB. Those solutions work but they're hard to learn and
in my opinion messy. Here's my view:

GRUB should not be used as a boot manager. It is more a kernel manager
and should be allowed to manage the startup of only one installation. I
always install GRUB to the same partitions as root (/).

GAG is a boot manager which sticks to it's job. It installs in MBR and
you just point it to any bootable partition - then GRUB or whatever can
take it from there.

Why do it this way?

If you (re)install anything which spoils you MBR you just reinstall GAG
and point it to the bootable partitions your using. If you have GRUB
installed to MBR you have to configure it to boot to the correct kernel
and it uses a tricky syntax which makes it hard to edit for mere
semi-nerds.

An even more compelling example is the case I hit too many times. 
1. Install Windows (writes to MBR)
2. Install Ubuntu (overwrites MBR)
3. Install another Linux (overwrites MBR again)

Now, if there is an update to the Ubuntu Kernel, Ubuntu will edit its
own grub files to point to the new Kernel. But that file is not being
used anymore - another Linux installation has taken over. Now let's say
you want to fix this problem, so you make GRUB from Ubuntu write to MBR,
now the other linux installation has the same problem!!

Using GAG each installation has it's own GRUB files, they don't touch
each other. When you start you use GAG to say which GRUB (or Lilo or
Windows) configuration should be used. One task, one app.

Duncan

-- 
Linux user: 372812 | GPG key ID: 21A8C63A | http://lithgow-schmidt.dk
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