[Nix-dev] Problem with grub

[Piotr Pietraszkiewicz]

Hi,

2011/5/10 Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl>:
> On 05/09/2011 05:14 PM, Michael Raskin wrote:
>> [...]
>> The problem is GRUB update.
>
> If the GRUB update causes so many problems, maybe we should revert it...

Yes! Yes!

I vote in favour.

One of the reasons why I decided to give NixOS a try was that I grew
frustrated with my previous OS leaving the system in a half-functional
or even complete-failure state after I have decided to run the update.
NixOS promised safer OS updates. I think that with a little bit of
thinking the NixOS may live up to its promise.

Making GRUB2 silently the default was careless. Reasons:
- Boot loader is a crucial part of the system - no boot possible if
something goes wrong.
- It *cannot* be rolled-back by the standard nix-env tools.
- People have complex GRUB setups: RAIDs, encrypted partitions, multi
OS systems, and mixes of the aforementioned. Such setups often require
tricks to get running. Who is able to test all these?
- GRUB2 except the name seems to be entirely different software then
GRUB (different philosophy, configuration files, options, etc.)
- GRUB2 has no reputation. Internet forums are full of rants on how
bad GRUB2 is.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against of having GRUB2. I just think
that switching boot-loaders should be user driven. GRUB2's
configuration could be made separate from GRUBs. It were better if one
needed to edit configuration.nix by hand to explicitly change the boot
loader. Even then some kind of warning about the risk would have been
nice.

-- 
Piotr