On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
Our servers use LILO. I've never taken the time to learn about GRUB, so I can't abide to have it in use on a server that I end up working on. If the server is, in fact, using GRUB, I would be surprised.
I don't know which is sitting on the boot sector, but both LILO and GRUB are in fact available on the system, so it should be elementary to use one or the other. In theory. :)
I am intrigued by this LILI option you mention. That's new to me, and it sounds pretty useful.
Lemme look it up....
/sbin/lilo -R - set default command line for next reboot
-R command line This option sets the default command for the boot loader the next time it executes. The boot loader will then erase this line: this is a once-only com mand. It is typically used in reboot scripts, just before calling `shutdown -r'.
So, you could set up separate entries linux-knowngood and linux-scarynew, set linux-knowngood as the default in lilo.conf, then:
/sbin/lilo -R linux-scarynew /sbin/shutdown -r now
If the machine can't boot up under linux-scarynew, it can be remotely rebooted, and the second boot should bring up linux-knowngood. (Or if linux-scarynew crashes on its own later.) If it proves reliable, the default can be changed later on.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)