grub2

[dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 01:16:09AM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:

> If the above wiki is true that grub legacy has been unmaintained (though 
> I'm sure the distros have been keeping it patched) for a while now, and 
> grub2 has been in development for 6 years, I wonder is why it has taken 
> this long for the transition to start. But I guess without a compelling 
> reason to switch, people play it safe and stick with what works.

Exactly.

> Dan Ritter wrote:
> 
> > Basically, they'd like to put in a guaranteed
> > fallback system that you can always boot to, and boot any
> > reasonably well-installed OS from. No more rescue disks...
> 
> I've seen this alluded to, but haven't seen any details on how it works. 
> Know any more details about it?
> 
> I'm not all that familiar with the grub> prompt in legacy grub, but it 
> looks like there is more you can do in grub2, such as listing 
> directories and cat'ing files.

grub has a very limited ability to parse directory entries in
ext2/3 and msdos/vfat filesystems. Grub2 has plugins that let it
read several filesystems, and eventually other things like a hex
editor, a partitioner, a text editor, and the ability to set up
some network hardware to copy in files across a network. 

-dsr-

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