Bug 782459 - make administrative updates/changes to grub a single step process
Summary: make administrative updates/changes to grub a single step process
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: grub2
Version: 19
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Peter Jones
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2012-01-17 14:46 UTC by Neil Horman
Modified: 2015-02-17 14:02 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-02-17 14:02:57 UTC
Type: ---


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Neil Horman 2012-01-17 14:46:46 UTC
Description of problem:
currently the grub2 process for updating the boot menu is fairly error prone and open to unexpected results.  Editing the boot menu can be accomplished in one of two primary ways:

1) editing /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
2) editing /etc/default/grub, and then running:
 grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

The first interface is prone to unexpected reversion, as a subsequent run of grub2-mkconfig will overwrite any administrative changes.  The second interface is prone to failure, as it requires the non-intuitive step (based on the relative easy of editing a grub 1 menu), of having to run a second utility to actually apply the changes to the real grub config.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
all grub2

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.edit /etc/grub2/grub.cfg
2.run grub2-mkconfig
  
Actual results:
changes from step 1 are overwritten

Expected results:
changes are preserved

Steps to Reproduce:
1.edit /etc/default/grub
2.reboot
  
Actual results:
changes from step 1 are ignored

Expected results:
changes are applied

Additional info:

I think the first problem is solved about as well as it can be with the large DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE warning in the header

As for the second problem, I think a small utility to merge the steps into a single step would be helpful, i.e a grub2-edit idea, like:

#!/bin/sh

$EDITOR /etc/default/grub

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Comment 1 Prarit Bhargava 2012-01-17 14:50:04 UTC
I think this is a great idea.  Forcing two steps when editing is terrible (see efi).

P.

Comment 2 Vladimir Serbinenko 2012-06-02 13:26:13 UTC
The problem with the old behaviour you seem to like so much is that user changes were in the middle of autogenerated code. This lead to problems when regenerating since the scripts had to figure what is user part and what is autogenerated and this lead to numerous bugs.

Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2013-04-03 17:03:23 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 19 development cycle.
Changing version to '19'.

(As we did not run this process for some time, it could affect also pre-Fedora 19 development
cycle bugs. We are very sorry. It will help us with cleanup during Fedora 19 End Of Life. Thank you.)

More information and reason for this action is here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping/Fedora19

Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2015-01-09 16:57:00 UTC
This message is a notice that Fedora 19 is now at end of life. Fedora 
has stopped maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 19. It is 
Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no 
longer maintained. Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now this bug will
be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '19'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
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Comment 5 Fedora End Of Life 2015-02-17 14:02:57 UTC
Fedora 19 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2015-01-06. Fedora 19 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
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bug.

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