[SLL] GRUB configurations and Ubuntu Kernel files with always the same name

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007, xeno at eskimo.com wrote:
>I'm quite certain that I am a babe in the woods still with GRUB, but on my
>work server, after talking to someone, I put together an actual "/boot"
>partition that holds multiple kernels, and has the grub subdirectory for
>multiple boot configurations so I can boot any of my partitions from there.

I used to go the separate /boot partition back in the days when
one had to boot in the first 1024 sectors of the hard drive.  I
pretty much gave this up when the 1024 sector restriction
disappeared, largely because (a) we typically create a second
partition, ``/backroot'' the same size as the ``/'' partition
which normally contains an exact copy of the ``/'' differing
only in the /etc/fstab file.  The ``/backroot'' partition is not
normally mounted, and updated only after successful updates of
the base system.

I've found that having ``/boot'' in the system partition gives
protections to broken vendor updates that manage to do unwanted
things in the boot partition.  Even if the /boot/grub/menu.lst
file is trashed, one can always boot from a live-cd to get a
working copy from the ``/backroot/boot/grub/menu.lst'' file.

>However, on Ubuntu they like to call the kernel always by the same name, so
>I cannot see until it boots whether it is i386, or AMD 64.  I found the
>Amd64 install I did had a bunch of things unavailable (like sshd), so I so
>far have i386, kubuntu, and the amd64 all installed.  It would be nice to
>have the AMD64 kernel around, as well as the one for KDE.  Are there any
>tricks to this?  How do I get all three distributions to have their
>respective kernels with a common /boot parition like that?  Am I allowed to
>change the filenames, or will that blow up Ubuntu?  I am basically
>scounging for any and all pertinent advice here.

Not changing the kernel name on kernel updates sounds like a good
reason to avoid ubuntu :-).

Bill
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