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Grub Vs. LILO

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by frenchwood

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What is your preferred load method for linux on a dual boot system?

20 replies

by jaqui

only because I wasn't impressed with boot interface for grub.

they both work fine, I just didn't like the look / feel of grub.

by jaqui

you're just grubby!!

;)

take a shower once in a while. :)

my biggest complaint with grubs interface is that it's a huge batle to get a text only boot menu.
lilo it's simple to get text only.
I like my runlevel 3.
i like having the data for what's happening during the boot scroll by, not hidden. that way I know that everything has loaded right.
( not like ms world where it's mushroom treatment* as company policy. )
and manual start of a gui if it's wanted for the session.

though I agree, grub is now better supported than lilo, and is definately more commonly used as the default by distro's.

* mushroom treatment = keep you in the dark and feed you bullsh|t.

by choppit

I've always used Grub. I'm sure LILO/GRUB have their pros and cons bur GRUB has always worked for me so I stick with it.

by amjad zoghbi

grub is gradually replacing lilo and grub tends to be somewhat easier to administer and is being shipped with new distributions such as Red Hat's Fedora Core 4. Although i have worked on lilo for quite some time with no drawbacks, I tend to stick to grub nowadays.

by stress junkie

As others have already said both LILO and GRUB work. The conclusion that nobody has stated is that you may as well use whatever your distro defaults to using.

Or you could use loadlin.exe. I used to use that back in my Slackware days when the Linux kernel was at v1.4. The nice thing about loadlin.exe is that it doesn't mess with the MBR at all. The downside is that nobody uses it any longer. Even I only mention it as a humorous diversion although it is still as viable as any other boot loader.

I now use GRUB but I wouldn't say that any boot loader is superior to any other. If I installed a distro that defaulted to using LILO then I would use LILO for that machine.

by jmgarvin

Be it LILO or Grub, it is always easiest and best to go with the distro default.

On that note: Some distros default with some proprietary wonky boot loader, you should replace those.

Also, if you don't plan on using the bootloader for anything, don't bother with it. However, it is a good security point as you can add password protection (at least to grub), so rebooting the system into single user mode is a no-go.

by apotheon

I always use whatever was the default for the distro and, in general, I find that it doesn't make a bit of difference whether I'm using LILO or GRUB.

by jmgarvin

Single user mode all the way baby! ;-)

And do I smell THAT bad that it is creeping through the ethernet!?? Dear god, I must bath more often or I'll smell French *zing!*

You can have grub scroll the data as well and you can still use interactive mode. Are you talking about the wonky Fedora boot screen deally?

You have defined my being! I am a mushroom!

by jaqui

not fedora, it was actually a mandrake release, grub only had graphic interface options.
( they default to graphic with lilo as well but allow for text interface with lilo )
I refuse to use red hat's products, since 14 installs to get mountable root partition, then it went and defaulted to runlevel 5 when told to use 3.
won't install red hat's products on my machines at all.

by jmgarvin

I hate how Red Hat does that. I set it to Run Level 3 on install and it still goes to 5. You have to do it post first boot and THEN it will work!

14 installs to get a mountable partition!!??? What happened?

by frenchwood

I'm a definite LILO fan, after annihilating my XP installation with debian's grub (still no tragedy that i lost XP - thanks god for backups!) on more than 1 install attempt.

Also, i prefer to see what my machine is doing during boot, so in that sense i agree totally with Jaqui.

Having had recent issues with my NIC, i knew about it before Linux had even finished booting, which in turn gave me time to swear a lot fetch a beer and calm down before attempting to rectify the issue!

by jaqui

that's why I like having it right there during boot.
though when mandrake 10, and 10.1 say network not working when it is it can freak you out for nothing.

saw that one, the starting eth0 failed message for both releases.
haven't looked at thier newest release ( mandriva 2005 le ) yet. it may be fixed or not.

by frenchwood

It definitely helps having that cooling off period to fetch a beer while lilo finishes ,otherwise i would just end up punching random s**t into the console still angry as hell!

I guess having had plenty of issues with Grub has probably made me choose Lilo as preferred, but still, i definitely reap the benefits now in both mental health status and keyboard costs!

(although my alcohol levels are dangerously high!

== Edit - Bad spelling!! ==

by jaqui

fdisk didn't set partition structure up correctly, for red hat.

but that's the rub, when you tell it to default to 3, it had better default to 3 or it gets removed and the company will never sell me thier product again.

even though mandriva likes gui and graphic feature in console, they don't stop you from saying no to all of it when configuring.

by jaqui

also the simple fact that lilo has been aruond longer, it's more proven, and always will be.

I've not had problems with grub, other than not liking the default graphic interface, but I don't want any graphics sucking resources at any time unless I specifically start them.

just learned something about ncurses, now I'm gonna have to go study the ncurses api and code.

by philipm

I have run into several issues where the boot loaders would get wiped out. It is MUCH harder to repair the GRUB boot loader than LILO. For some reason none of the recovery methods for GRUB seemed to work for me. With lilo you just chroot and run lilo.

The other really nice thing I like about lilo, especially on dual or multipi OS boot systems, is I can specify the OS I want to boot into when I reboot the system. I don't have to sit there while the system is booting to select the right OS.

by techrepublic

In recent years I've generally used Grub as the path of least resistance loader. The main value I see in Grub is that you don't have to run anything with it after an rpm supported kernel update.

However, since the 2.6 kernel systems (I mostly run Redhat or the CentOS knock off) I've had problems with grub on systems where I raid the boot partition and expect to be able to boot off of either disk. I also of course need to be able to replace a boot disk and be able to boot off of it.

This barely worked with Grub on Redhat/CentOS2,3 systems. It seems not to work at all with Redhat/CentOS4. I could describe numerous horror stories. I'm (sadly) going back to Lilo for the newer systems with RAID.

If anybody has any positive experience in this area I'd certainly like to hear it.

R.e. default init levels. I've never had any problems with just putting:

id:3:initdefault:

in /etc/inittab. I usually install X and don't use it unless needed. If I "need" (find convenient) X on the console I $init 5 and there I am. I don't see a problem.

However, this boot loader stuff for RAID (LVM) with Grub and Lilo I have found to be a significant problem - so I'd be interested in hearing the experience of others.

by jaqui

when all you have to do is:
startx

then you don't need to change runlevels to get back to console.

by humbletech99

It seems as though some people don't know how to use their bootloaders properly.

Grub graphical boot? One line to switch that on or off, come on people...

Default Runlevel? could be fed to bootloader, or you could just do it properly and set it in linux.

It's true it doesn't really matter which you use as long as you're happy with it, but Grub is more flexible, it is the future.

Also, it's easy for techies to miss the point, including myself, that it's just a tool, use it how you like to get what you want done, that's it.

Everybody is entitled to their own preference, as long as it works.

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