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Roger

Member

From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

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Status of lilo

I note in my recent upgrade of three machines to Devuan chimaera that aptitude now includes the lilo boot loader in the list of obsolete packages. That means obviously that has not been updated, but I hope that is not in danger of being completely removed from repositories, so that future upgrades will remove it.

I use my computers for a manner of different uses, a lot of program compiling, and also for the common purposes of web surfing and communication. They run one single operating system, and that suits my purpose ideally. Lilo presents a simple way of handling specifications for the boot process and has worked very well in my many years of using Linux. It continues to do so, and to mind it seems preferable to the vast complexities of grub which seems to designed to take control and become part of the operating system.

I hope that lilo will continue to be available to users of Devuan.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Status of lilo

If a package is marked obsolete then it has already been removed from the repositories[1]. You should probably remove it yourself manually and switch to something current and supported. GRUB is nice, as is systemd-boot (although the latter is only UEFI capable).

[1] https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/poli … o&x=submit

EDIT:

the vast complexities of grub

Don't be fooled by the multiply-redundent grub.cfg generated by grub-mkconfig. A handwritten configuration can be *much* simpler. Here's one of mine that multi-boots Debian & OpenBSD along with an entry to boot a live ISO image stored on the hard drive:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Head- … r/grub.cfg

15 lines :-)

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-10-24 18:46:37)

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Roger

Member

From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

Website

Re: Status of lilo

I appreciate the information. Thanks. What you show is essentially as simple as lilo.conf

My experience was with a new machine which had ubuntu and gnome on it, installed by the vendor just to check that things worked. I appreciated that gesture, but I had a hard time getting grub to change things over so that I was running Devuan, and just the packages I wanted. I did start out with a relatively simple grub.cfg, but more and more entries got added to it, making the boot process quite mystifying.

pcalvert

Member

Registered: 2017-05-15

Posts: 216  

Re: Status of lilo

If a package is marked obsolete then it has already been removed from the repositories[1].

That's a pity, because I have run into cases where GRUB did not work, or refused to install, but LILO installed and worked just fine. I'd rather use GRUB, but it's nice to have an alternative to fall back on when needed.

Note: It appears that LILO is still in Sid.

https://packages.debian.org/sid/lilo

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PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 269  

Website

Re: Status of lilo

They run one single operating system ... Lilo presents a simple way of handling specifications for the boot process

Installing Devuan 4 I tackled the same issue as you. I managed to use GRUB in a very simple way, trying to mimic the LILO behaviour. The HoaS aproach is appreciate; mine was using this /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Devuan"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_BACKGROUND=""
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

So far, so good.