Re: [RFC] Dynamic device.map

[Robert Millan]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 11:04:43PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to figure out how to make Debian's grub-installer operate
> without a device.map; it has various legacy bits and pieces that need
> conversion, and I'm working on these.
> 
> Along the way, though, I noticed that grub-install still unconditionally
> creates a device.map. This seems likely to become confusing if devices
> are changing around a lot, since it's never updated. I'd like to get to
> the point where it doesn't do this by default. How about we add support
> for an option to disable this, and make grub-installer and the Debian
> maintainer scripts pass it once they're ready? Some time later, we can
> flip the default value.

Why is this option necessary?  If we removed automated generation of
device.map, user can still call grub-mkdevicemap manually.

But first we'd need to figure out what we do with the "set root=xxx"
backward compatibility hack.  Has it been a while long enough that
we can remove support for GRUB installs that didn't come with UUID
support?

If we don't do anything on grub-mkconfig side and remove device.map, we'll
end up with things like "set root=(/dev/sda1)" which is not just useless
but also utterly confusing.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."