----- Original Message -----
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 02:53:11PM -0400, Doug Ledford wrote:
> This is incorrect. The whole reason the stage1.5 portion is an fs
> compatible reader is so that you can update the stage2 file and it
> will pick the changes up without needing to be reinstalled. This
> is
> also born out by the fact that on package update, there is no %post
> action in the spec to reinstall the mbr and stage 1.5 files even
> though the stage2 file likely just changed.
We never update the stage 2 file without reinstalling the mbr and
stage
1.5. The output of rpm -qf grub may be instructive.
Which has it's own gotchas. I never use grub-install as it does the wrong things in
certain circumstances. I always manually run grub then do the install command myself. In
my case, after a grub update, I'm going to end up with a newer MBR but older stage1.5
and stage2 files because I didn't know I needed to copy them from /usr/share after an
rpm upgrade.
> > I don't see where compatibility issues come into it.
If
> > you're using the code as you're meant to use the code then you'll
> > always
> > be safe. If you're not, it's not guaranteed to be safe.
>
> Like I said, not true. The grub package is designed to be
> updateable
> without requiring an mbr reinstall. What's more is I had a look at
> the stage1.[hS] files in the grub shipped in FC-1 and RHEL-5, and
> just
> like I said, they are indeed binary compatible. So even if the
> grub
> user space application pulls its MBR from a statically linked copy
> of
> the MBR, it will still work with pretty much any stage1.5 or stage2
> you find in a guest.
The grub package (as provided in Fedora) is not designed for that.
This
would be a much easier discussion to have if you stopped describing
things that are manifestly true as "not true". And while it is the
case
that grub *is* binary compatible between every version we've ever
released, it is *not* guaranteed that that remains true, or even that
it's true between us and any distribution that may be installed in a
guest.
I never said it was guaranteed, just that it was highly likely. And for the stage1
loader, I stand by that. For the stage1.5 and stage2 loaders, they are installed as a
pair by the grub install command I sent out in this thread and so incompatibilities
between them are taken care of.