[olug] of Grub and Lilo

[Eric Penne]

Did you just type this list yourself?  Did you get it from another
website?

Either way this is some of the best informative stuff I've heard in a
long time.  If you wrote this yourself maybe you should submit it as a
little informative spiel as a news story to olug.org

Eric

--- Christopher Cashell <topher at zyp.org> wrote:
> At Thu, 12 Dec 02, Unidentified Flying Banana Jeff Hinrichs, said:
> > Can anyone tell me why one would use Grub instead of Lilo?  From
> what
> > I can see, lilo is better documented and better understood. 
> Outside
> > of Grubs graphical bootup, is it better than lilo at anything else?
> 
> There's actually a number of reasons.
> 
> First of all, LILO works, for the most part, and for most people. 
> It's
> fairly basic, but it does what it needs to do.  However, it's also
> somewhat limited, and there are many things that it can't do (and
> some
> it couldn't do at some point, but have been semi-hacked in).
> 
> GRUB provides a true Pre-OS environment, something like a mini-OS,
> prior to booting a true OS.  This gives it amazing flexibility and
> allows it to do many things that LILO could never dream of.
> 
> A few examples of where GRUB is ahead of LILO:
> 
>   o GRUB was the first boot-loader to support booting beyond the
> 1024th
>     cylinder of a hard drive.  You can put your boot partition at the
>     very end of the drive if you want, and still boot from it.
>   o GRUB was the first boot-loader to properly detect systems with
>     greater than 64MB of RAM
>   o GRUB was the first boot-loader to support the Multiboot standard
>     (used by GNU HURD, and others, likely to be used by more systems
> in
>     the future).
>   o GRUB has long had a menu based interface available.
>   o GRUB is capable of booting BSD kernels directly.
>   o GRUB understands file systems itself.
>   o GRUB allows you to specify kernel arguments dynamically.
>   o GRUB allows you to update it's configuration file without
> rerunning
>     it.
>   o GRUB allows you to install new kernels, and use them, without
>     rerunning it.
>   o GRUB is file system-aware.  It can read file systems directly,
> without
>     the aid of an OS kernel, or a separate utility.
>   o GRUB includes an interactive shell, allowing you to do things
> like
>     browse (supported) file systems prior to booting (and you can
> even find
>     specific kernels that way, and boot from them).
>   o Due to GRUB's design, it is being developed at a faster rate,
> with
>     new features being included that LILO can't support.
>   o GRUB is gaining popularity, with many distributions moving to it
>     in favor of LILO, due to it's greater flexibility and features.
> (I
>     believe Red Hat now uses it as the default boot loader, and
> Debian is
>     planning to soon, also.)
>   o GRUB's config file is reread with each bootup, so you don't have
> to
>     continually overwrite the MBR every time you change it.  In the
>     event of a misconfiguration with another boot loader, you could
> leave
>     the MBR in an unbootable state.  With GRUB, a misconfiguration
> will
>     just drop you to a command line where you can proceed as you
> choose.
>   o GRUB can support diskless systems, and can even download OS
> images
>     from a network.
>   o GRUB is very usable in emergency boot situations, as it provides
> so
>     much functionality prior to boot.
>   o GRUB provides tab expansion for commands and file system
> browsing.
> 
> GRUB does have a few disadvantages.  Here's the major ones that I'm
> aware of:
> 
>   o GRUB is big.  LILO is a very small utility that relies on the
> Linux
>     kernel to do most of it's work.  GRUB contains a full command
> shell
>     available for interactive use, and also natively understands each
>     file system it supports.
>   o GRUB is file system-dependent.  GRUB can only work with file
> systems
>     that it supports.  In rare occasions, this can limit it.  One key
>     example was with Linux and XFS.  For a few months after XFS was
>     initially released, GRUB didn't support it, and wasn't able to
> load
>     kernels on XFS file systems.  With LILO, it just points to the
> sector the
>     kernel is at on the disk, and simply starts it via that, allowing
>     the kernel to handle all FS processing.
>   o GRUB is still new, compared to the venerable LILO, and thus
> lacking
>     in documentation.  LILO is almost 10 years old, and has numerous
>     how-to's, tutorials, etc, for it.  GRUB has a lot less, though
> the
>     documentation is improving.  There's quite a bit in info format
>     available from GNU.
> 
> That's about all I can think of at the moment.  All in all, I've
> become
> a fan of GRUB, and I've been slowly converting all of my machines to
> use
> it.  So far, it's gone without a hitch.
> 
> > -jeff
> 
> --
> | Christopher
> +------------------------------------------------+
> | A: No.                                         |
> | Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? |
> +------------------------------------------------+
> 
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