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"GRUB Loading kernel..." message


From: Isaac Dupree
Subject: "GRUB Loading kernel..." message
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:24:56 -0400
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080505)

I thought I remembered somewhere a discussion how the message
"GRUB Loading kernel"
is confusing, because it doesn't say what kernel it's loading, and grub loads lots of kernels (this message means that the "kernel" is a core part of GRUB, and the subject "GRUB" the message mentions is different: it's some early loading code.) There is an argument that "kernel" does not mean the same thing as "Linux kernel", which is quite right: that's why the message is not at all incorrect, just highly ambiguous. It seems like it should be
"Loading GRUB kernel"
. Although, looking at the files, boot/i386/pc/boot.S outputs "GRUB " and boot/i386/pc/diskboot.S outputs "Loading kernel", so the parts actually mean different things: maybe it's important that it prints "GRUB " first in case it never prints anything else? perhaps there are other possible code-paths? In any case, then maybe it should say
"GRUB Loading GRUB kernel", or, "GRUB Loading itself" :-)
to preserve the usefulness and increase the clarity. (Albeit, someone who doesn't know how GRUB works might be confused by how it can be loading itself: it's actually one part of GRUB loading a bigger part of GRUB. But we'll never be able to properly explain that to a nontechnical person :-)

(Am I missing something, since this is my first time looking at GRUB code?)

-Isaac




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