[svlug] mroe rh-7.0 fun

[Rick Moen]

begin Charles Peterman quotation:

[An unfortunate Red Hat Update experience]
 
> It got everything right, save modifying lilo.conf and running LILO.
> More greviously, it erases your old kernel so the machine won't boot with
> its old settings.  Yes, I discovered this the painful way.

I have yet to see a distribution that manages lilo cautiously enough for
my taste.  What I tend to do is always, always make sure that I have a
fallback kernel.  Like this sample /etc/lilo.conf:

boot=/dev/sda
root=/dev/sda2
install=/boot/boot.b
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
delay=20
default=linux
image=/boot/vmlinuz-new
        label=linux
	read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label=linux-old
	read-only

/boot/vmlinuz-new and /boot/vmlinuz are symbolic links, which I manually
point to whatever two kernels I want to have available.  This way, I
never have to edit lilo.conf.  It's a good idea, in my view, to set up
such a configuration on any x86 Linux box, as a precaution.

And it's tempting to trust automated package tools to install/upgrade
kernels correctly, but I figure it never hurts to do "lilo -v" just
before rebooting, to double-check that there were no errors.

> But on the plus side, this experience added a new tool to my arsenal:
> tomsrtbt.

Yes!  Belongs in every x86 Linuxer's bag of tricks.

-- 
Cheers,                                      Right to keep and bear
Rick Moen                                  Haiku shall not be abridged
rick at linuxmafia.com                           Or denied.  So there.