grub2

I’ve started work on writing a new LCFG component to manage the grub2 configuration on EL7. To assist with the switch over from the legacy version my aim is to be consistent with the previous grub component where possible. Some parts of the interface do badly need improvement though, particularly the support for multiple grub installations will be completely dropped. I am also writing the new component in Perl, another shell component bites the dust…

I’ve come up against one annoying issue. We have always used password protection to prevent against users editting the entries in the boot menu. It appears with grub2 that this also makes it impossible to select alternate menu entries that are password protected. This was first reported to Redhat/Fedora on 14th July 2012 (bug#840204) for Fedora 17 and it still applies to RHEL7 in April 2014 (bug#853430). Clearly Redhat has very little interest in “fixing” this issue which makes me think we will have to carry local patches. It looks like this change in behaviour is a result of the upstream Gnu developers wanting menu options to be inaccessible by default. It does appear that the patches in the Redhat bugzilla entry will at least make grub2 work the way we need.

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1 Response to grub2

  1. Pingback: grub2 – sanity prevails | Scientific Linux 7 LCFG port diary

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