If a known computer magazine writes about the new grub2 version, it cannot be that bad at all, isn’t it? True, Grub2 is still unfinished, but it should be already quite useable. So why not giving it a try?

The first steps are quite simple: Unmask the current Live-Ebuild and add the USE-Flag ‚multislot‘ to prevent the removal of your current bootloader. You know – if things break, we do need a working bootloader. And there it starts working, the emerge magic, delivering a nice GRUB2 build.

But is it a successful build? Let’s see and kickstart one of the setup scripts for generating a configuration file. But happiness won’t last long: My Root-FS is a BTRFS drive which is unknown to GRUB2 by now, delivering a nice error message. But who cares if he has a proper /boot partition on ext? Why is GRUB2 mocking about that? Damn it!

Well – just to recall, we are testing beta software. So it’s time to get our hands dirty. I am looking for the setup script, trying to track the error down – and there it is. A variable points to / instead of /boot and there we go. Config written, all is set to go – but wait: Now it would be time to write the GRUB2 code into the MBR. But this would be suicide. As I am running GRUB already, I am just adding an entry chainloading the new GRUB2, to be able to reboot into my old environment if needed.

Remember – Windows also uses its own Bootloader which is loaded the same way.

After those steps we’re set for the first reboot. The Bootloader shows up, I am selecting GRUB2 and I am looking at a crappy black and white display. I didn’t do any styling yet, as I wanted to make sure the system boots. The list of kernels currently in /boot shows up as written in the configuration. Anything looks fine so far and I am hitting Enter for making it boot. But after some seconds, my kernel bails out. What happened?

The Root-FS wasn’t found. Looking at the config again, it looks like the bootloader didn’t get the boot-parameters for the kernel right. But hey, it is still software in development. So let’s see if there’s any progress in a few days or weeks…