Re: [RFC] Dynamic device.map

[Robert Millan]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 08:12:52AM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 01:55:27AM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Certainly, but I would like to be able to deliver a system that does not
> generate a device.map by default.

We don't need a new option for that.  We'd just not generate device.map at
all, and provide grub-mkdevicemap for users who want to mess with it.

> No, I don't think we will. grub-probe is perfectly capable of mapping
> /dev/sda1 to (hd0,1) even without device.map;

I wasn't very fond of this because it's BIOS-specific.  But I guess we can
live with it.

-- 
Robert Millan

  "Be the change you want to see in the world" -- Gandhi