parted, distro-default lilo/grub menu item

[Andrew Clausen]

Hi all,

It just occurred to me that we should provide a convenient way to
access Parted directly from boot menus (like lilo/grub's) that
are installed on hard disks.  It would be preferrable to be able
to use the same files from ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/bootdisk, and
also the parted-boot rpm's that red hat provides.

In fact, it would be nice if every distro installed it by default :)

FWICT, lilo, grub and yaboot support initrd.  The x86 initrd we
ship seems to work with grub (I just tested it - my floppy drive
just broke, and I needed to resize my root partition...).

So, we need a convenient way of getting initrd's to users, and
installing that initrd in the boot-loaders boot menu.


The obvious things to do are:
(1) add instructions to the manaul and ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/bootdisk/README
how to use partroot-1.6.1.img with grub/lilo/yaboot.  Perhaps include
shell scripts to autodetect & do the job?

(2) encourage distro's to have a parted-boot package, that includes an
initrd.  Get this installed by default!

(3) encourage distro's to include an entry for parted in all their
default boot-loader entries.  Or, perhaps the proposed scripts in (1)
should be included in the parted-boot package from (2), so that
when you install it, you automatically get parted?

Ideas?

Andrew