Softpedia News reports that version 2.02 of the GRUB boot loader has been released. Among the many new features are support for LZ4 compression on ZFS, 64-bit ext2, XFS v5, Morse code output and a modem-like output through the PC speaker, Xen paravirtualisation, TrueCrypt ISOs, Apple fat binaries on non-Apple hardware, and 16-bit mode on non-x86 hardware.
Further information:
NEWS file
Related stories:
Windows 8 Update Erases Grub, Enables Secure Boot
Press Backspace 28 times: Pwn Unlucky Linux Systems Running GRUB
Related Stories
deif writes:
A recent Windows 8 update detects other OS installs as a "security problem", erases non-windows bootloaders and enables UEFI Secure Boot, all without user intervention.
I contacted MS by chat (in Dutch, so of no use to you) and asked them about this. They vehemently denied this was possible at all. Multiple times, in no uncertain terms. Same results were acquired by phone: denial, denial, denial.
I pointed out that it did actually happen, and that it wan't the first time such a thing had happened in the history of MS updates -so "impossible" was BS, to put it shortly.
Then came a chat reply which amounted to "MS updates makes sure W8 functions fine, it does not look at other OS's integrity". This is, in my opinion, a de-facto admission that yes, the update had changed the bootloader back to the W8 version that ignores other OS's, and yes, it had set the UEFI setting back to "secure boot."
El Reg reports
A pair of researchers from the University of Valencia's Cybersecurity research group have found that if you press backspace 28 times, it's possible to bypass authentication during boot-up on some Linux machines.
The problem's not a kernel nor an operating system problem, but rather one in the very popular bootloader Grub2, which is used to boot an awful lot of flavours of Linux.
Essentially, if you enable Grub2's password protection during system startup, it won't do you much good--it can be easily defeated. (Luckily, the vast majority of distributions of Linux do not enable this by default.)
As Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll explain in an advisory, hitting the backspace key 28 times at the [username prompt of the GRand Unified Bootloader] during power-up will produce a "rescue shell" under Grub2 versions 1.98 (December, 2009) to 2.02 (December, 2015).
[...] The researchers have also cooked up a fix, available here.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:49PM (2 children)
I breed grubs in my shoes and feed them my discarded hair and skin. When the shoes are full of grubs then I eat the grubs for dinner. While I wait I code open source software and upload to github. Living the shoeless coder lifestyle of Dick Bathroom Stall-Man.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:00AM (1 child)
I guess I was the only one that wanted to know more about Dick Bathroom Stall-Man. Granted, the character development is bit avant-garde, but it reminded me of Tom Hanks in that movie where he lives in an airport.... now we may never know if we wears a super hero costume and has an alter ego, Porta-Potty Pete....
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:17AM
Dick == Richard
Bathroom == Matthew
Stall-Man == Stallman
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:49PM (4 children)
First we had vi, lilo, and sysVinit. Now we have emacs, GRUB, and systemd.
We didn't listen!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:44PM
Emacs is older than vi.
Nice troll though.
(Score: 3, Touché) by darkfeline on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:44PM
Emacs was created the same year as vi.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:26PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:50AM
I never would've guessed this because vi seems so much more *archaic* than emacs.
Emacs is a full screen editor, while vi is at its heart line oriented, with the ability to do full screen exiting only being a later addition (vim).
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:03PM (8 children)
Another bloated GNU project.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:56PM (4 children)
A hurd of gnus lie dead, grubs feasting on their bloated corpses.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:16PM (3 children)
You have been eaten by a gnu.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:58PM
Today's SSDD comic is a text adventure.
SomewhereGame [poisonedminds.com] [javascript required]
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday April 30 2017, @01:27AM
oops, bumped a grubus.
(the grubus has moved.)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:56AM
My sister was bit by a gnü once.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:08PM (2 children)
Well, looking at the changelog I don’t think that’s such a fair characterisation. The new functionality added all supports the core mission of Grub. Obviously they need support for LZ4 compression on ZFS to be able to boot off of a disk with such a file system, same too with support for 64-bit ext2, and xfsv5. Morse code and modem-like output on the PC speaker are useful for diagnosing problems on systems with no attached monitor. The Xen paravirtualisation stuff is for folks who want to be able to boot systems under a Xen hypervisor. The Apple fat binaries thing is normally used to boot OS X, so I guess it would help with someone doing a Hackintosh. Reading TFA though, I don’t see anything about 16-bit mode on non-x86 hardware though. What I do see is ‘enables “linux16” on all x86 platforms, not just BIOS’, which I gather permits booting 16-bit OSes images on, say, UEFI systems that don’t have a traditional BIOS. I think it is related to this [debian.org]. I think a correction to TFS is in order.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:32PM
This. Booting is hard. You don't have an OS to rely on, you may be booting to one of several different OS's running on god only knows how many filesystems, and you have to deal with different storage technologies and hardware variants.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:33PM
That is indeed a mistake (my mistake).
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:09PM (8 children)
I've got nothing against GRUB, but there wasn't any good reason to change after so many years, so I didn't.
Hopefully somebody will pick up development of LILO again.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:29PM (2 children)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by butthurt on Saturday April 29 2017, @11:35PM
The department line in the original submission says "LI".
(Score: 1) by turgid on Monday May 01 2017, @02:11PM
Indeed. When I upgraded to 3TB hard disks, I had to switch to Syslinux from LILO. 21 years I'd been usiing LILO...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @12:38AM (4 children)
Unlike what most people think, GRUB is not the only game in town. LILO was only recently abandoned, basically feature stable and there are a couple of alternatives to GRUB like the SYSLINUX suite and rEFInd. The interesting thing is that the UEFI specification contains its own boot manager, which means that a boot loader isn't really required anymore and most distros are EFISTUB by default now so setup is just copying the correct files and a single efibootmgr command.
(Score: 5, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:25AM (3 children)
UEFI is not libre, and not trustworthy. I sure wouldn't rely on its boot manager. You never know when they'll toggle a single bit that makes the PC able to boot nothing except Windows 10. That whole Secure Boot fiasco served as a loud warning. Like a lot of smart TVs, it may be programmed to check online periodically for updates, and silently install them whenever a new one is found.
Even apart from their neglectful attitude towards Linux, silent, forced updating is a big no-no on production systems. I haven't heard of any UEFI programmed to do that, but it could be, it has that capability. I'm not confident that the UEFI producers fully understand you never, ever mess with working production hardware. You only update when you must, to fix problems you are actually having.
Another bad feature of UEFI is its much larger size and complexity compared to BIOS. If you really want assurance that code is correct, you have to use formal verification. You can only do that on very small code bases. Even if you don't insist on formal verification of correctness, the additional size, complexity, and power means there are more bad bugs in it. A mistake there can brick a computer. Errors in a PC BIOS have less ability to do serious damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:41AM (1 child)
UEFI is whatever the programmers make it, as long as they stick to the spec. It is so much more than x86/x86-64 from Intel and AMD. It can be used on any little-endian processor (section 1.8.1). You could have a completely FLOSS version running on RISC-V, if you want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:33AM
Sticking to the spec and not deleting files if asked when the spec says you must not, for example, sure.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Sunday April 30 2017, @05:00AM
Have you ever looked at Libreboot? It only supports a handful of motherboards which are nearly 10 years old now. It should be ready about the same time as Hurd.
(Score: 3, Touché) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday April 30 2017, @01:40AM (4 children)
ya gotta love free software.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:29AM (2 children)
Welcome Mr. Crawford. I remember you from k5. Now all we need is Egil!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:42AM (1 child)
Filter error: the world weeps for kuro5hin
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:08AM
Every time I think of kuro5hin, mehs roll down my cheeks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:20PM
Yup, gotta love it. Even if it is any good, it may be 2045 before you see it included in your favourite distro.
(Score: 0, Troll) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:27AM (2 children)
-- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. . --- ..- - .--. ..- - ..--.. - .... .- - .----. ... --. .-. . .- -
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:13AM (1 child)
.. ... -... .-. .- .. .-.. .-.. . -. . -..- - ..--..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:50AM
⠠⠊⠀⠞⠓⠊⠝⠅⠀⠽⠕⠥⠀⠍⠑⠁⠝⠞⠒⠀⠠⠊⠎⠀⠠⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑⠀⠝⠑⠭⠞⠦
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:33AM (4 children)
Let's call it "chain-booting", wherein a Linux system is able to reboot into another kernel image. Otherwise, the GRUB people won't stop their madness until they can boot from source, from GitHub, over a VPN. Booting from BIOS/EFI would get restricted to anything trivially accessible locally (which excludes ZFS clusters and similar logical contraptions). Anyone who wants to boot weird shit can start a primary Linux system hat has all the means of getting data from whereever imaginable and can then hand off to the desired target.
Grub has been to me, since it has taken over from Lilo in the major distros, a constant source of frustration, despair, anger, and outright hate towards its developers. It's been at least on par with xorg.conf when configuring this was still required. Their level of fuckedupness might be understandable for a project that is constantly used by a small minority "in the know", but not for something that everyone has to use, but only needs to touch maybe once a year.
One thing they could occupy themselves with, where I wouldn't object against a little complexity, would be graphics. As in "hold the control key upon boot and be presented with a nice choice of boot targets to click on".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:05AM (2 children)
I dunno, I've been using Grub since forever because I got irritated at Lilo. Lilo did have graphics support, which was nice, but editing the boot command line in the bootloader and not having to constantly write a new MBR is what sold me on Grub.
I see a lot of bitching about Grub, but I'm not sure I understand. What kinds of issues do you have?
Once I stop being lazy about learning how to set up EFI secure boot for my install, I'll probably stop using a boot manager all together, since EFI provides its own boot menu.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
What kinds of issues do you have?
I plainly have no idea what to do.
And this statement is from someone who brought up embedded hardware from bare metal with an ICE, customized U-Boot to suit the hardware, and built a fitting kernel for it before. I'm careful with generalizing my own rare experience, but if I, with that background, consider doing anything with Grub a major WTF-experience, it probably is complete crap, at least as far as usability is concerned.
These days I'm mostly aware of the pitfalls, so I head straight to Stackoverflow or a similar site for the "How to restore your MBR (with a recent Grub versuion)" guide for dummies, and I'm set. And with its off-by-one partition naming it's not even a decent fit for Linux. I do understand that this and its other weird features are great help to the Hurd crowd for debugging their stuff, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2017, @03:53PM
I plainly have no idea what to do.
Join the club,
Grub, I was happy with, Grub2 on the other hand, is a clusterfsck POS that works, its wonders to perform...on all my desktops, but I'll be fscked if I'll have it on my servers. Too much 'black magic' hidden in way too many bloody config files..and I've gotten to the point on the desktops that if it works, I don't go poking the sleeping bear.
As to these config files, back in the day I used to program in APL (necessity, not choice...well, admittedly some choice.) I'd rather go back and program in APL than try figure out WTF is going on in some of these config files, hell, I'd rather go back and do some SPARC assembly than fiddle with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @05:34PM
Th technology you're looking for is called "kexec"
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday April 30 2017, @02:03PM
Under Gentoo when I first I upgraded from GRUB 1 to GRUB 2, the fact that you were supposed to use a script to generate an overly complex configuration file turned me off to it immediately. I have no idea what they're up to or why and don't care.
Shortly after that I switched to syslinux [syslinux.org] and haven't looked back (extlinux in my case). Nice simply readable configuration files. It's like systemd (using openrc here) and everything else...it's been decided that simple=bad these day apparently. Everything has to be a black box like Windows I guess.