On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Doug Ledford <dledford@redhat.com> wrote:
See my above comment about cross-compilers.  There are certainly use
cases for having the tool install and live on the host.  As for
security, if you assume that the host is locked down tight with no
running services besides sshd and libvirtd, then it is arguably the
better place to have a tool like grub installed than in the guest which
might be running apache and considerably more open to attack than the host.


I don't think the problem is with the use case per-say. I think problem is grub as a tool was never designed with this use case in mind, and I think what people are trying to say that its amazing that grub toolset has ever worked for Richard's host/guest use case and he's gotten very lucky relying on what is essentially undefined/unverified behavior even prior to the introduction of grub2 when he was primarily working with guests and hosts using different grub1 variants.  Virtualization changes the rules of the game, and we have to be very careful not to assume that tools like grub correctly anticipated the needs of a highly virtualized environment.  Something is needed, its just not clear to me the tools we have fits the need well enough to be reliable.

-jef"When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail"spaleta